Book of the Dead

by Greig Beck

  He looked again at the doors, steeling himself. The Order of the Old Ones was an ancient sect that reached back to the days of Babylon and even beyond. Its sole purpose was the worship of Cthulhu and its minions, with the goal of easing the great gates of R’lyeh open so they might have rule over the Earth once again. In return, people like Drummond were made wealthy beyond the dreams of Croesus, and were promised they would be made kings over humankind for a thousand years. They would also be spared while the other creatures of flesh and blood were…consumed.

  Drummond stood in the empty back street before the black double doors. There wasn’t another person in sight, nor a bird perched on an eave, nor a rat, nor a single bug scurrying about. There seemed nothing living in the entire street.

  Drummond pressed the bell button. There was no sound, and the huge black doors stayed closed and silent. Time stretched, but he knew to wait. After another few moments the door swung inward, and a tall shaven-headed man nodded, but said nothing. He was one of the priests of the order and was dressed in a rough cassock, made of something coarse that looked like it had been woven from long hair. Drummond grimaced, imagining what it must feel like against the man’s skin.

  He followed the priest in silence; no words were necessary, as he knew where he was to go. It wouldn’t matter if he did feel the need to talk; he had tried to strike up a conversation once before, and it was if he and his questions didn’t exist. The priests were courteous, helpful, but silent as mutes, and were both the household staff and bodyguards of the Father – nothing more, nothing less.

  Drummond continued weaving along dark corridors that sloped ever downward, with the only light a single candle placed here and there in damp stone alcoves. He guessed the candles were for his benefit, as the priests didn’t seem to mind the dark at all. Drummond watched the man’s back for a while – he seemed to glide in his cassock, as though he didn’t take steps but instead moved on some sort of conveyance that had no normal up-and-down motion of walking. Maybe he was on wheels. He would have laughed at the thought, expect he knew that his nervousness would have made it come out like some sort of insane cackle.

  After another fifteen minutes of heading down ancient moss-covered steps, and along smooth stone pathways, Drummond estimated they were a good half-dozen floors below ground. It was warmer here, as though the heating had been cranked up to about eighty degrees. He pulled a silken handkerchief from his breast pocket to dab at his brow and top lip.

  Eventually the priest stopped before a large archway, at another dark, sealed door. He turned and nodded to Drummond, and then stood back into a coffin-shaped alcove. Drummond knew what was expected – he was to go in alone. He swallowed, and licked dry lips. He could feel his heartbeat in his throat, and knocked once before pushing open the thick door.

  The first thing that always assailed his senses was the smell – fishy, but not the scent of fresh-caught fish, but more the odor of something left to putrefy on a dead shoreline. There was also the heat, and the pervasive darkness broken only by the light of a double candle on the altar stone at the far end of the large room.

  Drummond stood still, feeling perspiration run down his sides. There were other impenetrably dark alcoves at various places, and he knew they led on to further passageways. He had no idea how large the building was, or how far it descended into the Earth, but guessed whatever the size from the outside, its depths led down too many levels for him to calculate. Frankly, he thought, I’m as deep as I ever want to go.

  A gust of even more fishy air: he felt the hair rise on his neck. He knew what was required of him and walked slowly to the altar, keeping his gaze averted, then got to his knees, clasping his hands in front of him. He looked up, straight ahead, feeling his heart rate increase.

  “Father.”

  A huge figure grew out of the darkness, seeming to rise up from behind the altar stone. The Father was over seven feet tall, wearing a cowl pulled up to conceal a large head, and a dark cassock over a lumpy misshapen frame. Like the priest on the way down, the Father seemed to glide rather than walk, and was always face-on, never turning his back, as though there was only ever one side to the being.

  “Charles.” The voice was ocean deep and guttural. It had a bubbling quality as if the man had fluid in the back of his throat and was struggling to form words around a sluggish tongue.

  “Yes, my Father. You called and your servant came.”

  The voice bubbled for a moment, before words formed. “The Al-Azif, the hidden Necronomicon, will be found. It is, as we suspected all along, in the land of the Egyptian kings.” The Father paused as if to catch his breath or rest a strange tongue in a strange mouth. “Charles, there is a man, a Hussein ben Albadi, in Syria, who has access to the first copy made – it is quite detailed. He is talking to the Americans now, sharing what he knows. They are already there.”

  Drummond looked up. “Do you want me to intercept them?” He knew if he could recover the Book, his reward would be substantial.

  “Not yet.” There was wet wheezing for a few seconds. “Go to Syria first. But let the Americans recover it. Then take it from them.”

  Drummond bowed. “It shall be as you wish.”

  The Father glided closer, his arm reached forward. Something that felt like soft, cold fingers caressed Drummond’s chin, tilting his face upward. “The last seals will be broken; the Necronomicon will show us how. You will speak the words, Charles.” The hand caressed his face. “Bring it to us, and you shall be rewarded like no other human on this world. You will be the king of the kings. The Old One will rise, and we must all be ready.”

  Drummond’s eyes were glassy in his pleasure, but as the Father continued to lean over him, he needed to hold his breath from the stench. The tall being shifted, and Drummond caught a glimpse of the structure within the dark folds of the cowl. He felt his testicles shrivel. Things moved in there where the face should have been, coiling over each other, writhing and twisting softly, like some many-legged sea creature moving in excited agitation.

  The head leaned back, and the image disappeared in the folds of the heavy material. “Charles, they must never learn to read the book. Even those who see its fragments must be…silenced. Nothing must stop our work. Nothing must stop the final seals being broken. Nothing.” The hand moved to clasp his shoulder – it was viscid soft, at first. He felt the cold through his jacket, but then also felt pressure, and then pain. “They must not learn.”

  “I…understand.” Drummond knew his voice sounded a little high, as the fingers began to dig into his flesh. He crushed his eyes shut, and the pressure on his shoulder eased and then vanished. He looked up in time to see that the figure had retreated behind the altar, and then, as if by magic, it simply shrank or dropped from sight.

  He fell forward and threw up, his stomach continuing to roil within him. After another few moments, he got to his feet and backed to the door. As soon as he got there, it was pulled open by the bald priest, who motioned for him to immediately follow him back along the way he had come.

  Back in his car, he used both hands to wipe his handkerchief up and down over his face. He had already discarded his jacket, as the smell of the handprint made his stomach turn over again.

  Kroen sat silently, waiting for his command.

  “Get our Syrian people on the line. Prepare the fast jet, and a team; I’ll take charge.” He smiled, his eyes burning with excitement. “We can’t beat them to it now, but who cares? We will let them find it, and bring it to us.” He confidence was returning. “I want that fucking book, Kroen.”

  “Yes sir,” the big man said, staring straight ahead.

  Drummond smiled thinly. “And I want to find out what else this Dr Hussein ben Albadi really knows.”

  Chapter 11

  They’d left the road hours back, and the tough four-wheel-drive vehicle was now bounding over a dry, rock-hard clay pan, throwing up clouds of yellow dust. Abrams scowled as he looked back through the rear windshield. “We’re
sending up a plume a mile high.”

  Hartogg spun the wheel. “Nothing we can do about it, sir. Place hasn’t seen rain for weeks – dry as the dust in a mummy’s jockstrap.”

  Abrams snorted and then tried to make room between the two SEALs. He turned to the other passengers. “Everyone all right back there?”

  The major looked at each of them briefly before his eyes travelled once again to the rear window. Matt knew he wasn’t checking their own dust plume again; he was looking for other plumes – pursuit.

  Matt sat at the window to the right in the rear seat, and Tania had demanded the one on the left for security. Andy got the middle as he had scrambled to be next to her.

  “Are we there yet?” the geologist asked over the sound of the engine.

  Abrams smiled patiently. “About a hundred miles, but definitely not as the crow flies – so maybe a day’s driving – longer if we need to do some avoidance maneuvering.”

  “How will we know when we’re in Turkey?” Andy continued to watch the landscape go by.

  “People will be speaking Turkish…and hopefully won’t be trying to cut your head off.” Tania nudged him when he rolled his eyes. “Just pulling your leg, Bennet. As there’s no border, and just miles of empty land, we’ll have to rely on our GPS to tell us.”

  Andy nodded and slid down into his seat. “You seemed to know a lot about this lighthouse and island. What exactly are we looking for?”

  Tania leaned back. “The Lighthouse debris is mostly underwater now, and the Island of Pharos has thousands of archeological pieces scattered over the surrounding sea floor – columns, statues and sphinxes have been lying there for ages.” She turned to him. “I’m looking forward to what we can find there.”

  Rick Berry had his head down looking into his GPS, and then pointed flat handed to the north-west. “We need to veer five degrees to avoid a small town coming up.”

  Matt knew that running into possible spies was not an option for them. Though he could speak most Middle Eastern languages fluently, the group looked about as Syrian as the Bee Gees. If they ran into rebels, they wouldn’t get away without a firefight.

  Hartogg eased the wheel over a notch, and slowed as they hit some heavily stoned ground. Abrams looked back for a moment, grunted and then slid lower into his seat as well, and then pushed his cap down over his eyes. The dust cloud was worse, and, as they barreled along, the thick tires kicked up a huge rooster tail of debris.

  Matt sipped from his canteen and looked past Tania and out her window. It was easy for the eyes to become tired, looking out over the crumbling yellowed ground, and the occasional pale spiky leaves of stunted trees.

  Though they were heading into an area of higher elevation, it was still hot and dry with the outside temperature around ninety and the humidity at a moisture-sapping fifteen percent. This was not the sort of land you took to by foot. Without lots of water, you could end up dehydrated and delirious within twenty-four hours. He bet that the two SEALS, Abrams, and probably even Tania might be physically equipped for the terrain, but city slickers like him and Andy would be in a world of hurt. He was…

  Their vehicle was kicked up into the air, to spin in slow motion. Matt felt his stomach lurch as light and dark swirled in and out of each other. The truck struck the ground on its roof, and his head and neck compressed. Everything went black.

  *

  Matt opened his eyes as he was being dragged backward, his boots furrowing the hard ground. He looked up to see the SEAL, Hartogg, smiling down at him; the big man winked.

  “Nice to see you back in the land of the living, Professor.”

  “Wha…?” Matt’s vision swam and the SEAL’s white grin in a dust-and-soot-covered face stood out like a Cheshire cat’s.

  “Bit of a lump in the road, is all. All good now.” Hartogg continued to grin and drag him.

  Matt craned his neck; Tania was sitting up, hunched over and holding her head. Andy was beside her, sipping from a canteen; his face was streaked red.

  Matt went to sit forward. “I’m okay.”

  Hartogg pulled him up next to Andy and Tania. He then let go, and kneeled to push up one of Matt’s eyelids and look into his eye. After a second he nodded and slapped him on the shoulder. “Good man; you profs are tougher than I remember from when I went to school.”

  “You went to school?” Andy grinned at him.

  Hartogg grinned back, gave him the finger, then got back to his feet and jogged to the upturned SUV. Matt sat forward, feeling his head swim momentarily.

  “What just happened?” He watched as the SEAL joined Berry and Abrams in stripping the destroyed vehicle. Smoke billowed and the scorched ground indicated there had been a fire at some time. The three men worked quickly, crawling in and over the machine like ants over roadkill, and that’s exactly what it was.

  Tania groaned. “Oh God.” She rubbed her head through her hair. She looked around quickly. “Give me a shove here, Bennet.”

  Andy pushed Tania forward and she got to her feet, standing with her hands on her hips but head down as she sucked in huge gulps of air. She looked across to Matt. “What happened? A fucking mine, Claymore, IED, take your pick – that happened. You okay?”

  Matt nodded, and felt his neck creak.

  “Good.” She smiled down at him.

  “I’m okay too, thanks for asking.” Andy toasted her with his canteen.

  “I could already see you were,” she said, stretching her back.

  Berry trudged back to them, unloaded some gear. “Boss says five minutes and we bug out, Captain.”

  “Got it.” Tania sipped again and watched as the big man returned to the truck. In a few more minutes they had everything of value that was still working, and the SEALs and Abrams joined the wounded.

  The major lifted field glasses to his eyes. “We need to move. Was an IED, a good one; usually means there’ll be insurgents close by. They’ll want to see what it was that trigged their trap. We need to be a long way from here by then.”

  Andy looked around. “Where to? Do we head back?”

  Abrams shook his head. “Nope, we’re closer to the border than home. Might as well continue. Our sat-comms are toast so as far as HQ is concerned we’ve gone dark. We can only send a local squirt to some friendly stations and hope we can pick up support – might be useful if we run into trouble.” He continued to scan the horizon. “So, we go forward.”

  Andy snorted. “Did you say run into trouble? You mean, this is not trouble?”

  Abrams continued to look out at the dry landscape. “You’re alive, aren’t you?” He turned back to the group and grinned. “But that was the good news. So, now the bad news – we do not have transport, we are in extremely hostile territory and will need to move quickly, carrying as much as is humanly possible. There will be no backup, no international communications and no more supplies until we complete our mission. That is the priority, those are our orders.”

  Tania dusted herself down. “The only way is forward.” She turned to Matt and Andy and smiled. “Just think of it as a very long walk on the beach.”

  Matt scoffed and looked out over the arid, gritty land. “Yeah, and then normally the payoff is a cool dip in the surf.”

  “Not this time, Point Break.” She held out her hand, and Matt grasped it and hauled himself to his feet. He felt a little woozy, and although his head cleared quickly, he was left with a splitting headache. He used one hand to press on his temples.

  “How’s the head?” She stepped in closer to him, looking deep into his face. “No concussion I can see, but you look a little pale. You need to sit down again?”

  “No.” Matt felt a dab of stickiness at one of his temples – blood. “Headache, but I’m okay.” He winced.

  “Got just the thing.” She reached into her pack, jiggled something and then held up her open hand – there were two small white tablets on her dirty palm.

  “Excedrin – that’s it?” Matt raised an eyebrow.

  Sh
e grinned. “Kearns, out here, even if you lose a freakin leg, that’s it. Look around, Professor; we’re not in Kansas any more.”

  Matt shook his head. “It’s okay, I’ll survive.”

  “Tough guy, huh?” She closed her hand over the pills and smiled. “I like it.”

  “My back is sore.” Andy got to his feet, knocking dust from his hair.

  She snorted. “You’re a geologist, Bennet – an outdoor man who works with rock.” She jerked a thumb at Matt. “I’m sure the toughest thing the professor has had to put up with is a fight over the last bagel in the staff room.”

  “Hey I…” Matt clamped his mouth shut, cutting off his protest. He’d battled krakens beneath the Antarctic ice sheets, been stalked by giant beasts up in the Black Mountains, and he’d travelled to the Amazon to trek through a hidden prehistoric jungle. He looked at Tania grinning at him, and he shrugged. At the moment he was getting special treatment because she thought him a bookworm – Why rock the boat? he thought, and grinned sheepishly. “You know me too well already, Captain.”

  The SEALs talked quickly and softly, with Abrams pointing in a few different directions, and then to small devices – probably GPS and ground radar, Matt assumed.

  After a moment, Abrams nodded and turned. “Okay, people, let’s move it out. I want to do twenty miles before we rack. Berry, take point, Hartogg, secure the rear – no stragglers, folks.” He waved them on. “Take us out, Lieutenant.” Berry jogged a few hundred feet out in front, and then continued at a fast walk. His neck was craned forward, and Matt imagined his eyes would be darting over everything that could possibly conceal a sniper, explosive, or attacker. Given the hostile territory, Matt didn’t envy these guys for a second.

  In another few hours, the sun had started to dip, but the heat was no less intense. The only saving grace was that it was a dry heat, though even so, lips became chapped and skin chafed. Water was now at a premium, so rationing at short sips only was in force. Matt knew what could happen during dehydration – disorientation, hallucinations, headaches, and muscle fatigue, and then, in extreme cases, death.