The Mummy (26 page)

Beauty and the Beast

N
ight had come unannounced, blending into the day of the black sun, with only the stars and moon to mark the difference. At Fort Stack, the guard had been tripled, soldiers walking the parapets, outlined against every turret; but their presence was little comfort to the two Americans holed up in the foyer of the Englishwoman’s quarters.

“What’s taking O’Connell so damn long to get back?” Daniels asked. Arm still in a sling, the dark, brooding Daniels sucked on a cigarette as he paced, occasionally looking out the window, which had a view of the road out in front of the fort, and the mud-brick tavern across the way, whose lights and music beckoned.

“Streets are probably clogged,” Henderson said. “Probably spooked the local savages, havin’ the sun turn black.”

“Oh, and it didn’t spook a Great White Hunter like you.”

“I’ve witnessed stranger things, lately.” The tow-headed expedition leader was seated in a chair near the door to the Carnahan girl’s bedroom, holding his share of the Hamanaptra booty; a jeweled canopic jar. He turned it in his hands, admiring it, studying it, hoping the artifact would bring a price remotely worthy of what they’d been through.

“Hell with this,” Daniels said, grinding his cigarette out in an ashtray on a table by the window. “I’m goin’ over and have a drink.”

“Why don’t you bring me back a bottle, when you’re done?”

“Bourbon?”

“Bourbon with a bourbon chaser.”

Daniels nodded and headed out.

Henderson lit up a cigarette, letting it pull on his lungs, relaxing him. Smoke streaming out his nostrils, dragon-style, he fondled the jeweled jar, and for the first time he reflected on its antiquity, its beauty, not just its value.

A breeze drifted in the open window along with the sounds of flute and tambourine music from the tavern across the way, creating pleasant images of veiled belly dancers in Henderson’s mind, filmy curtains fluttering, like the arms of a native girl gesturing seductively to him. Then the breeze blew colder—nights were so goddamn chilly here—and Henderson, the precious jar in his hands, rose to shut the window.

He gazed out at the lights of the tavern, the foreign music with its compelling rhythm calling to him. Maybe he’d go over and join Daniels; maybe he’d see if some wench was dancing to that exotic music. He glanced at the Carnahan girl’s door, wondering if he dared leave her here alone for a few minutes. He was dying to get out of this prison . . .

Then he turned to the window just as the breeze gained intensity. Even as he was reaching to shut the shutters, a tidal wave of sand blasted through the window, knocking him back, the jar tumbling from his fingers, unharmed, to the floor, as a swirling, whirling dervish of desert dust engulfed him, lifting him, sucking him into its cyclonelike funnel.

There in the foyer of Evelyn Carnahan’s living quarters, while furniture looked mutely on, untouched by the storm in its midst, Henderson twirled within the sandstorm, spinning in a deadly pirouette, his screams quickly dying, choked off, as the life was sucked out of him. Then the sand drew away from what had been Henderson, and gathered in upon itself, taking a human shape, transforming into a further regenerated, dark-robed Imhotep, looming above the withered shell of the American.

As the mummy retrieved the jeweled jar, a scarab scurried from a cavity in his chest and scampered up into a hole in Imhotep’s cheek; almost absentmindedly, the mummy chewed the scarab, swallowed, and then—hearing the moan of a woman—looked toward the closed bedroom door.

Imhotep stepped over the husk of Henderson and strode to that door, trying the knob, rattling it. He examined the door, as if considering whether to knock the thing down or not; perhaps he did not want to disturb her, unduly, for he decided to enter in a less tumultuous manner.

Within the bedroom, Evelyn slept restfully atop the covers; she did not wear bedclothes, rather a black, arm-baring dress with a heart-shaped, white-lace-trimmed bodice, comfortable enough to sleep in, but something she could leap from bed wearing for whatever the next dreadful stage of this ordeal might be. That mind-set explained the dreams she was caught up in, nearly delirious images of herself and O’Connell fleeing from the mummy across the ruins of the City of the Dead, only at times she was fleeing from Rick and holding on to the mummy’s hand . . . it was all very troubling, which was why she was moaning, even crying out in her fitful sleep.

She was unaware of an image, just across the bedroom from her, far more troubling and bizarre than those she was currently conjuring from her subconscious . . .

Sand was streaming in through her keyhole and down onto the floor, pouring like water from a spigot, making a small pile, then a larger one, like an hourglass got out of hand, until a mound, a dune, had formed, and when the sand had stopped streaming in, that dune, that mound, began to form itself, as if some invisible sculptor were fashioning a sand statue of a god, or a man, or in this case, something that was both and neither: He Who Shall Not Be Named—Imhotep.

Almost floating, in his dark robes, Imhotep went to the beautiful young sleeping woman, and like the Prince waking Snow White, he knelt over her, whispering, “Anck-su-namun,” and kissed her.

He paid no heed to sounds behind him—the bedroom door, its knob rattling, then the crashing, the pounding, as some mortal fool on the other side tried to bash it down.

Nor did Imhotep pay any heed to the result of his kissing the sleeping beauty, that her very flesh corrupted his, causing his lips and the skin around his mouth to decay, putrefy almost instantly, down to the bare, white bone, creating a ghastly skull-like grin as he looked down adoringly at the tossing and turning young woman.

The door burst open in an explosion of splintering wood, O’Connell shouldering through, stumbling to a frozen stop as he faced the remarkable, appalling tableau of the black-robed mummy bending over Evelyn, on her bed.

And, while the mummy’s kiss had not woken her, the sound of O’Connell breaking her bedroom door down had served as an abrupt alarm clock going off, and she now looked up at the fetid face of the adoring mummy, leaning in to bestow her another kiss, and her lips parted, her lovely mouth widening as if to accept the tongue that had once belonged to the late Mr. Burns, and then a scream emerged from her so bloodchilling that even the mummy reared back.

And then Evelyn was sitting up, shoving him away, one hand slipping past the robe to the ancient bandaged flesh and sinking in, creating instant infection, immediate atrophy.

“Aren’t you a little old for her, pal—like two or three thousand years?” O’Connell advanced on the creature, though his guns remained tucked in his shoulder holsters. “Get the hell away from my girl!”

Wheeling in anger, robes flowing, Imhotep scowled and growled at the intruder, teeth bared through rotting flesh.

O’Connell winced in disgust. “Whoa! Next time you’re plannin’ to kiss somebody, bring your lips.”

The mummy raised his arms in attack, lurching toward O’Connell, who yelled, “Jonathan—now!”

And in the doorway, Evelyn’s brother appeared, her white cat in his arms; Jonathan pitched the cat to O’Connell, fire-brigade style, and O’Connell tossed the little creature into the oncoming arms of the big creature, who instinctively caught it, reacting like a man who’d grabbed onto a bucket of hot coals.

The cat screeched, the mummy shrieked, in dreadful comic harmony. Imhotep dropped the animal and, clearly weakened, stumbled toward the window, which blew open, shutters rattling, and a gust of wind swept through.

And the mummy began to spin, to twirl, and before their wide eyes, which they soon covered as if caught in a sandstorm, whirled like a dervish into a funnel of sand, which blew and spewed out the window with incredible force, sucking and slamming shut the shutters behind him.

Not a grain of sand remained on the floor.

Jonathan entered, revolver in hand, trembling like an old man, and O’Connell rushed to Evelyn, taking her in his arms, as she looked away, rubbing the slime off her face with the back of a hand, reeling with revulsion.

O’Connell, an arm around Evelyn’s shoulder, walked her into the foyer, with Jonathan following, just as Daniels entered, bottle of bourbon in hand.

Which he dropped, the bottle exploding into glass fragments and splashing liquid.

“God in heaven,” Daniels said, gazing upon the withered corpse of his friend Henderson, “I’m next.”

O’Connell grabbed the man by his good arm. “None of us is next if we can kill that bandaged son of a bitch. And I just stopped him with a goddamn kitty.”

“Pity that famous gunnysack of yours isn’t full of felines,” Jonathan said dryly. “All
we
have are bullets.”

Evelyn was staring down at the shriveled corpse of Henderson, but not in horror: She was thinking.

“You’re both right,” she said to O’Connell and her brother. “We can only battle this monster from antiquity with the weapons of antiquity . . . and I think I may know how to do that.”

Within minutes, they were speeding down the streets of Cairo in the Dusenberg convertible, Jonathan behind the wheel, honking the horn to clear a path, Evelyn again squeezed between her brother and O’Connell. Daniels, sole survivor of the American party, sat in the backseat, with O’Connell’s gunnysack arsenal; his face drawn in fear, the once stoic soldier of fortune was removing his sling, testing his arm, apparently thinking having two limbs might come in handy.

Though still shaken by the appearance of an amorous living mummy in her bedroom, Evelyn managed a small smile for O’Connell, asking teasingly, “So I’m your ‘girl,’ am I?”

“Aw, just tryin’ to fluster that freak.”

“Are you sure you weren’t jealous?”

“What? That guy makes Frankenstein look like Valentino! When I kiss you, you won’t be spittin’ out bones and bandages.”

“Shut up!” Daniels screamed from the backseat. “Shut up you, fools! We’re all going to die if we don’t do something!”

Evelyn looked back at him, not unkindly. “We’re about to do something. Right now.”

And indeed the massive Museum of Antiquities loomed ahead, palm trees out front swaying in the evening breeze, gas torches along its sandstone walls glowing and flickering in the night, Egyptian warrior statues standing tall, guarding the double front doors, where—moments later—Jonathan dropped his passengers.

The curator was expecting them—Evelyn had phoned ahead—and the round little man, still accompanied by Med-jai chieftain Ardeth Bay, escorted Evelyn, O’Connell, and Daniels through the museum’s vast atrium entry way with its impressive display of sarcophagi, boats, and enormous statues. Their footsteps echoing (Jonathan, who’d parked the car, catching up with them), they headed up the wide marble staircase, Evelyn lecturing the curator, for a change.

“According to the ancient lore,” she was saying, “the black book found at Hamanaptra is said to bring the dead back to life.”

“The Book of the Dead,
yes,” Dr. Bey said. “My understanding is that you read an incantation from that volume, which—”

“Yes, we’ve been over that quite thoroughly, haven’t we?” Evelyn’s expression was a combination of a wince and a smile. “But as a scholar, I tended to judge such things from an anthropological viewpoint. Such sorcery was something I was unwilling to believe.”

The curator’s pursed smile made his tiny mustache wiggle. “I take it you’ve revised your opinion.”

“Better believe it, buddy,” O’Connell chimed in. “Ask her how three-thousand-year-old breath smells.”

Evelyn gave O’Connell a quick, cross look, then said, “Yes, well, what I’m thinking is that if that obsidian volume can restore life to the dead—”

“I get it!” O’Connell snapped his fingers. “That
gold
book you had us looking for!”

“Why, Rick,” she said with surprise and pleasure, “I believe you’ve hit on the answer, too.”

“Sure—if the black book brings ’em back, stands to reason that gold book can send ’em to hell again!”

“Quite,” she said. “That certainly would be consistent with the lore.”

Narrow-eyed, nodding, Ardeth Bay said, “That might undo the damage you have done—and return He Who Shall Not Be Named to the grave.”

“Finally!” Daniels said through his teeth, clenching a fist and shaking it.

They had reached a landing and paused there.

“An incantation from
The Book of Amun Ra,”
the curator was saying. He’d been thinking this through. “Yes. That might do it! But that priceless artifact has been high on the lists of those plundering the Valley of the Kings since the time of the pharaohs—from the grave robbers of antiquity, to the likes of your own father, Miss Carnahan.”

She shrugged. “Well, maybe they didn’t know where to look.”

O’Connell touched her arm. “And you do?”

“Possibly. There’s a display on the balcony that may hold the answer.”

And they moved onto the balcony to a glass-and-wood display case of fragments of stone tablets bearing various hieroglyphs; the curator—using a far more conventional key than a puzzle box—quickly opened the display case. In so doing, he seemed to unleash an eerie chanting . . .

“What is that dreadful sound?” Jonathan asked.

“It’s coming from outside,” O’Connell said, nodding to the octagonal window that faced the parking lot.

The chanting was growing, and what exactly was being said became chillingly evident, and horrifying familiar:
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”

They gathered at the window and looked down at the crowd of people, in turbans and gowns, veils and dresses, rabble and well-to-do alike, even a few tourists mixed in with this native mob, pouring from the streets toward the museum, swarming like insects, some of them carrying torches.

“Jesus!” Daniels said. “What’s wrong with them? They’re like . . .”

“Zombies,” O’Connell said.

“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”

“I say, what’s a ‘zombie,’ old chap?” Jonathan asked, his eyes wide with the terrible sight below him, the milling, chanting multitude.