TO WAKE THE DEAD

by Richard Laymon

  Over the weeks, Maged proved to be an invaluable companion. The little Egyptian led me about in the night. We found his enemies. Fought with them. Won battles with our fists. We drank stolen raki. On regular occasions we whiled away the nights in the arms of tawny, lusting women with dark orbs for eyes who showed me delights I had never known.

  It was because of Maged, and the wild times we shared, that we made the discovery that has so altered my life.

  On a January night, after saying good night to Father, I met Maged at our agreed rendezvous point. From there, we traveled a long distance on foot across the desert until we reached a village of mud houses. In one of these, Maged assured me, we would find a pair of twin sisters whose beauty and sexual talents would spoil me for all other women.

  I waited outside while Maged entered one of the houses to fetch them. Soon, he reappeared. The two girls behind him were beautiful indeed, though no older than seventeen. For long moments, I stared at them in the moonlight, struck with awe. I greeted them in Arabic. They smiled lasciviously, but spoke not a word. Maged quickly informed me that they were deaf-mutes. At first, I was troubled by this revelation. I soothed my conscience, however, by reminding myself that the five piasters we intended to pay the girls for their expert services was a handsome amount for such peasants. The fellahin who worked at the tomb, after all, received only three piasters for an entire day’s labor.

  Taking a hand of one girl, I followed Maged into the dunes beyond the village. There we spread blankets on the sand. The girls disrobed, revealing their beauteous skin to the moonlight. Their eyes were dark, lustful. Their breasts small peaks, tipped with velvety dark nipples. My whole body was a mass of scintillating sensation as I anticipated whiling away the night with these desert beauties. I was ready to take mine at once, but Maged restrained me and indicated that he and I should be seated.

  The girls stepped away from us, their bare feet leaving dainty prints in the sand. With olive oil cupped in their hands, they caressed one another until their skin had a glossy sheen in the light of the moon. Then they danced. Never have I seen such a dance; never before nor since; and it always lingered in my mind, to be recalled on balmy nights when my heart is restless. The memory is painful, as exquisite memories so often are.

  I see the flow of their bodies moving as if to a wonderfully haunting, erotic melody. But there is no music. The only sound is the distant barking of pariah dogs.

  I see the naked girls caressing themselves, hands rubbing pointed breasts, sliding over smooth bellies and thighs, stroking over the darkness between their legs while they turn and writhe as if spitted on great phalluses. I see them move closer to one another. Reaching out, their fingers meet. Then they are drawn together like lovers long apart, lovers starved for the touch of one another, starved for the taste.

  The taste of forbidden love.

  Prohibited desire.

  How long they continued, I don’t recall. I wanted them to dance forever; yet I wanted them to stop instantly so that I might satiate the appetite that strained my entire being. At last, their bodies slid apart. They stepped toward us, chests heaving, hair wild. They had, no doubt, expended themselves several times in the course of their strange dance, but their half-shut eyes held a promise of boundless delights.

  I stood motionless as one of the twins slowly removed my clothing. She smelled of far-blown sand and olive oil and woman. A moonlit droplet slid to the tip of her nipple, shimmered there, containing all the vibrant colors of the rainbow. I longed to lick it off, that drop of woman-heated oil. When the last of my clothes fell to the sand, I leaned forward, my tongue finding that drop of oil, licking, rolling the flavor around my mouth, and swallowing.

  Had I been cheated out of the next few minutes, I should have counted my life a waste. But whispers of the girls’ departure from the mud-brick village were tardy in reaching Kemwese, their father. Before his arrival, I spent myself with each of the girls. I was standing, a twin upside-down in my heated embrace, my head hugged by her slick, golden thighs, my tongue darting into her sweetness, my phallus throbbing within the tight constriction of her mouth, when a sharp blow to the back of my leg toppled me (it was only with rare good fortune that I avoided a tragedy regarding the girl’s teeth).

  As I rolled in the sand, I glimpsed Maged making a dash for safety. A sandaled foot kicked my breath away. Hearing a struggle behind me, I managed to look around. The naked girls were at their father, clutching his arms and legs, fighting to save me. They proved no match for the enraged monster. He battered them aside and came at me, roaring.

  His foot slashed toward my face. Catching it in both hands, I twisted, throwing Kemwese down. At this moment, I might have chosen to run and save myself. This, however, was against my combative nature.

  Never one to abandon a fight, I attacked the growling savage. I fell upon him, fists pummeling his face. I heard a satisfying, gristly crunch as my knuckle smashed his nose. No sooner did blood spout from the nostrils than his arm swung up and struck my head with the force of a club. Dazed, I tumbled away.

  I was only vaguely aware of the huge man lifting me. He raised me high above him, then tipped my head downward and drove me toward the sand. My neck should have snapped like a rotten twig when I hit the ground. Somehow, it didn’t. The blow shocked every inch of my frame, however, and I was powerless to prevent the beast from working his will upon me.

  He lifted me again. I knew, in what remained of my conscious mind, that I would soon be dead. Rather than throwing me down again, however, he began to carry me. Where he was taking me, I had no idea. Nor did I care. I only hoped, in a fogged, dreamy way, that if he continued to carry me long enough, some of my strength might return and I might yet save myself.

  At length, he reached his destination. He flung me to the ground. Though I hadn’t the power to raise my head, I could see that we were near the ruins of the Temple of Mentuhotep. Grunting, Kemwese pushed aside a large block of stone. I immediately recognized his intentions. Horror coursed through me, clearing my mind and giving me new strength. Raising my head, I saw a small, black patch in the sand beneath where the rock had rested. A hole. A dark, shadowed hole reaching downward into the belly of the desert.

  When he came for me, I threw a handful of sand into his face. Blinded and coughing, he groped for me. I rolled out of his reach. I got to my hands and knees and crawled, trying to gain my feet, but my body obeyed the commands of my mind in only the slowest fashion, and soon he had me by the foot. He dragged me backward, dragged me toward the awful hole. My fingers clawed at the sand. All sense of manhood broken by the horrible prospect awaiting me, I cried out for forgiveness. I begged him. I offered him money. At the end, I threatened him with terrible vengeance.

  It was useless.

  He raised me by both feet. I saw the black pit, like a tunnel to Hell, below my face. My hands dug into the sand at its edges, but to no avail.

  Then he released me.

  I plunged headfirst into the blackness.

  Screaming.

  THE AWFUL PIT

  I fell, petrified by an unreasoning fear that I might plunge forever through the lightless void. I had little time, fortunately, to dwell on the horror of that thought. Abruptly, I hit the bottom of the shaft and lost consciousness.

  When my mind returned to me, the aches in every limb of my body quickly reminded me of the gravity of my situation. The darkness was so intense that I blinked several times to be certain that my eyes were indeed open. The lumpy pressure on my back told me that I was lying face-upward. I raised my arms. I felt great relief and comfort in touching my still-naked body; my face, my chest and belly, my privates, my thighs. The hands, touching familiar places, gave me a warm feeling that I was not entirely alone in this strange and frightful pit. They also confirmed that I was still whole, at least as far as I could reach. I stirred my legs. They seemed unbroken.

  As I lay there continuing to stroke my body and regain a sense of reality, I began to assess my situat
ion. The devil Kemwese had undoubtedly left me here to die. That being the case, he must have covered the opening of the pit with the enormous block of stone that had originally sealed it. Even should I succeed in climbing to the top, I would be powerless to stir the rock. My best chance of survival, however, seemed to lay in that direction.

  Gazing into the black space above me, I tried to determine whether he had indeed rolled back the stone. If he hadn’t, I should certainly be able to see the light of stars or the moon. Nothing was visible. Nothing.

  I decided I must attempt to climb out nonetheless. First, however, it would be wise to explore the confines of my prison.

  As I stirred myself to sit, the uneven ground beneath me seemed to wobble. Lowering a hand to the lump beneath my bare hip, I touched a pliant surface that I immediately recognized as hide. My fingers explored further. The hide felt wrinkled, sunken. Pressing it, I felt the solid roundness of bone below the surface. With a gasp, I flung my naked body clear of the creature.

  There, shivering, I huddled in the darkness and gazed in its direction. I could see nothing, of course. To confirm my fears, I finally ventured forward. My hands again encountered the dead flesh. I explored it briefly before realizing, with an agony of horror and revulsion, that my fall had been cushioned by the desiccated corpse of a man.

  He, like myself, was naked. I wondered if he too had been caught in debauchery with the daughters of Kemwese. The thought chilled me, in spite of the pit’s dreadful heat. Perhaps my end would be the same as his.

  “No, damn it,” I said. The sound of my voice was dreadfully loud in the confined chamber. Silly, I know, but I feared for a moment that I had startled my deceased companion awake. I listened, half-expecting him to speak. Or worse, to advance and to feel his dead fingers touch my naked body.

  To my great relief, he didn’t.

  All I could hear was my ragged breathing.

  A dry, labored sound.

  From that point on, I took pains to remain silent.

  Starting at the feet of the dead man, I began to inch my way along the boundary of my cell. I crawled on hands and knees across ancient dust. Dry as dead skin on the back of my throat. I let my shoulder brush along the stone wall to keep my orientation. After proceeding in this manner for no longer that a minute, I set my hand down on someone’s face. I screamed.

  The sound came back at me like a banshee howl.

  Jabbing my eardrums so hard they hurt.

  For a long time, I crouched against the wall, panting the hot air, struggling to regain my composure. Then I ventured forward. With hesitant hands, I familiarized myself with my new neighbor. His flesh felt stiffer than that of the other man, leading me to the assumption that his residence in the pit had been more prolonged. My hand searched along the length of a naked limb. I could not tell whether this was an arm or a leg until my fingers met a bag of shriveled skin and a hard stick of dried flesh as thick as my thumb.

  Scrotum; phallus.

  Both sucked dry of moisture by the desert air.

  Briefly my hand roved over a sunken stomach; a chest; through skin I could feel the ridges of ribs. Then I found the husk of the throat and hard roundness of the head with cotton-candy tufts of hair.

  I left him behind. Continued my exploration. My searching hands moving over the dust through the utter darkness. My reaction to the next body was more easily controlled. I did not scream. I merely removed my hand rapidly from his foot.

  This man was fully clothed. I checked his pockets. In his shirt pocket, I found a pack of cigarettes and a small box of matches. Carefully sliding open the box, as if it contained the most valuable treasures of Egypt, my fingertips found the matches. Counted them. Eight. Eight precious matches. I struck one.

  Nothing.

  Duds.

  Spent matches.

  Was I doomed to sit out the rest of my life in this arid chamber beneath the desert?

  To slowly die of thirst?

  Madness claiming me first? As this all-engulfing darkness bore down on me?

  Would tomorrow find me singing to my dead companions while holding their dry hands for comfort?

  No… take care, I told myself. Try the matches again.

  This time I felt the box until I found the abrasive strip. I must have run the match head along the smooth paper side.

  I struck again. Its phosphorus head sparked in the darkness, then burst alight with such brilliance that pain shot through my eyes. In a moment, however, the pain passed, and I found myself gazing upon a horrible scene. I groaned.

  For there, gathered around me in the bottom of the shaft no larger than a dozen feet in diameter, were the dried corpses of five men. The one in front of me, the clothed one, still held the revolver in his shrunken hand. I saw a hole in his right temple. Then the stain darkening the dust, from the copious outpouring of blood and brains.

  One, across the floor, had gaping wounds in his thigh. I had little doubt how they’d gotten there. The grim thought entered my mind that I too might soon be driven by extremities of thirst and hunger to consider partaking of my companions.

  One in particular, a bald, lean man clad only in undershorts, looked fresher than the others. I doubted he had been dead more than a few days. Perhaps his body still retained enough moisture to quench the thirst that would shortly begin to torture me. There might be as much as half a pint in the bladder. No. That would be…

  Fire scorched my fingers. I dropped the match. Darkness swallowed me and I stood motionless among the dead, considering my next course of action.

  At length, I crouched beside the man who had taken his own life. Groping blindly, I found his pistol. I had the devil’s own time getting it out of his hand, and finally resorted to breaking two of the fingers. With the gun free, I carefully released the cylinder catch. The cylinder swung sideways. I tipped the barrel upward. Six loads dropped into my palm. By touch alone in the darkness I deduced two were expended sheik from the open ends of the cartridges, while four were still whole, hence live cartridges. From their size and weight, I guessed them to be of .38 caliber. I reloaded and set the pistol aside where I would have no trouble finding it.

  For the present, I had no need for the weapon. The fact of its presence, however, was a great comfort. I knew that, should circumstances offer no alternative, I need not be reduced to a groveling, inhuman beast. I would simply take my own life, like my inert companion, and be done with it.

  With that settled, I once more groped in the dark. With a new sense of assurance I stripped the man of his trousers. I found a penknife in one of his pockets. Using that, I cut his pants legs into long, narrow strips. When I had a dozen of them, I struck another precious match. Six left, I told myself. Only six. I applied its flame to the end of the strip and found that I had created a rather satisfactory source of light. Paying out fabric as needed, I made a close inspection of the chamber by the illumination of the burning cotton.

  The stone wall, I noticed, sloped gradually inward above me. This ruled out the possibility of climbing to the top of the shaft. Might there be another way out? Certainly, my predecessors hadn’t found one. Their failure, however, constituted no certain proof that such an exit did not, in fact, exist.

  Here, my knowledge of Egyptian tombs stood me in good stead. The pit, my prison, had obviously been constructed in ancient times. Its proximity to the Temple of Mentuhotep might indicate that it was built during his reign, possibly as a secret entrance to his tomb. It was not unusual to find such passages, often designed as elaborate mazes complicated with false entries, dead ends, and portals concealed in walls and ceilings for the purpose of foiling tomb robbers.

  I exhausted most of my supply of makeshift wicks in a useless search of the walls and floor. While my flame still burned, I quickly fashioned more strips from the dead man’s trousers. Then I renewed my search, looking for the slightest clue that a secret passage might lie behind the stone wall of my cell. I found no such clue. Had I a pick, I might have battered my way to
freedom. With bare hands, I was powerless.

  Allowing my light to die, I sank against one of the walls. I was sweaty, exhausted, coated in dust. My hopes of escape had faded to a dim prayer for a miracle.

  As I sat in the blackness, surrounded by my silent companions, an idea began to form. It seemed impractical at first. It seemed less so as I thought about it. Though the top of the shaft was higher than my frail light carried, any object that might take me closer to it seemed worthwhile.

  Perhaps, after all, the passage to the tomb had been placed midway up the shaft wall. Such a manner of concealment was not unknown to the wily priests of those ancient times.

  Thus, with the project justified in my mind, I set about constructing a platform of the bodies. It was a ghoulish task. In the darkness, I dragged each from its place of rest. Their joints were stiff, their skin tough. I grew to know their flesh by their manner of undress, by the various configurations of their limbs. Some had died prone, others sitting. I made use of these differences in constructing my platform, often sacrificing height for sturdiness.

  At last, by clever stacking of four cadavers against the wall, I had a platform as high as my chest. I lifted the last body, the one most recently dead. He seemed less brittle than the others. Also, his limbs had stiffened into convenient positions. I stood him upright on top of the others, leaning him slightly backward against the wall. When he was securely in place, I lit a strip of cloth, the upper end of which I had earlier inserted in his mouth. I adjusted the burning tip at the side of the platform so it wouldn’t hinder my progress.

  Then I began the awful climb. The bodies trembled precariously under my feet, but I was careful to place my weight only on the strongest points: a hip here, a shoulder there. At last, I reached the top of my platform. I stood motionless, gripping the wall, gathering my strength for the most strenuous part of the climb.