A few minutes later, he emerged feeling refreshed and was still scrubbing his hair when he thought he heard a sound from the bedroom.
“You want to leave some extra towels before you…” he started to say, expecting to find the housekeeper changing the bedsheets. Instead, he was confronted by a robed figure whose burnoose hid his features in shadow. Cradled in his arm was the package containing the jar. Behind him, one of the leaves of the sliding glass door was open and the warm morning breeze was wafting the curtains inward. Outside, the sun was brightening the eastern sky and from the streets below, traffic sounds could be heard.
“Hold it right there, mister!” Stalls shouted, trying to sound as threatening as he could. Standing in the center of the room stark naked however, didn’t make him feel very formidable right then.
Showing not the slightest bit of intimidation, the burglar crouched and began to back toward the open doorway — was that a hiss he was making? Stalls didn’t have time to wonder about it as he lunged after the retreating figure who sidled this way and that in quick, jerky movements that struck the American as definitely odd.
The burglar’s moves allowed him to easily avoid Stalls’ clumsy attempts to grab him before slipping out the door and over the railing that lined the balcony outdoors. Desperate not to lose the jar, Stalls dashed outside in time to see the man land on the sidewalk and scramble in a loping run down the street.
Cursing, Stalls ran back inside and dressed as fast as he could. He couldn’t allow the man to get out of sight if he was going to recover the jar, because there was no question about going to the police for help. Egypt had strict laws against dealing in antiquaries, and dealt even more harshly with those who bought them on the black market. No, if he was going to get the jar back, he’d have to do it himself.
Balking at the two story drop from his balcony, Stalls took the emergency stairs and burst out the service door to the sidewalk. Around him the street was still relatively deserted that early in the morning, making it easy to spot his quarry with his funny, stooped posture and jerky movements even from a distance. Thus, a fast run up the street, glancing down alleys and side roads as he went, enabled him to finally spot the thief, package still tucked under his arm, as he skittered up the far end of a narrow side street.
By the time he reached the spot where he’d last seen the thief the man was out of sight, but with only one direction he could have gone, Stalls was pretty sure he was still on the right track. A few minutes later, now deep into the increasingly crowded warrens of Cairo’s back streets, with the smells of cooking food and human waste pungent on the air, he caught sight of the thief again. So far as he could tell, the man wasn’t aware that he was being followed and Stalls decided that he could afford to slow down and wait for a chance to nab him that would be to his advantage.
He was in a wholly unfamiliar part of the city and beginning to feel somewhat nervous about the seedy looking nature of the neighborhoods he was passing through when it occurred to him that the thief might be going to meet friends, friends who could help him take care of the lone American pursuing him. Suddenly anxious to conclude the chase, Stalls put on an extra burst of speed and caught up to the unsuspecting thief just as he paused above a set of stairs leading down into a dark basement.
“Now I’ve got you…” Stalls managed to say as he collared the man by his loose robes and used the momentum of his run to swing him against the mud wall of a nearby building. Momentarily stunned, the man’s grip on the package loosened and Stalls moved swiftly to grab it from him. “I’ll take that, and you can take this…” He gave the man a good left uppercut that was meant to strike him beneath the ribs and wind him but instead, his fist caught on the fabric of the man’s jibba and seemed to glide across the surface of his body. A hiss of hot, stinking breath washed across his face as the unexpected lack of resistance threw Stalls off balance and he fell clumsily against the body of his opponent. Before he could regain his balance, something hit him on the back of the head, forcing him to his knees. Still clinging to the package, he determined to remain upright but the effort only set him up for another blow, once again to the head and this time, he fell forward, never feeling the cobblestones that rose up to hit him in the face.
The low murmur of voices was the first thing that impressed themselves on his senses when Stalls finally emerged from the darkness of unconsciousness. For a long time, or what seemed to be a long time, that was all he was aware of. The voices, or what he took to be voices, seemed to be slurred with an unusual amount of sibilants in their speech…was it English they were speaking? Or Arabic? He couldn’t tell, it was hard to concentrate.
The next thing he felt was the hard, unyielding nature of whatever it was he lay against. That’s when he realized that he was lying down. Opening his eyes didn’t do any good. He couldn’t see a thing in the darkness. He moved his arms to prop himself to a sitting position and realized that they were bound behind his back. Why…? Suddenly, it came back to him: the theft, the chase, the fight…then he was hit on the head. He must have been unconscious and whoever it was that had struck him, had tied him up and brought him here to…where was he? And it was only at that moment that he fully realized the possible danger he was in. If he’d been captured and taken by the thieves who’d robbed him, they might not feel safe in letting him go. His only hope lay in the belief by the natives that all Americans were rich and that he could be more valuable to them alive than dead.
Struggling to raise himself, he found there was a wall at his back and used it to force himself upright. He was still groggy from the blows to the head. He had a monster headache and his eyes refused to adjust themselves to the dim light of what must have been one of the subterranean basements that was a regular feature of the local architecture…offering residents the only real respite they had from the country’s relentless heat.
Shaking his head, he squinted his eyes against the dim light and tried to make out more details about the room around him. Right away, he noticed that there was an echoing quality to the voices indicating that the room was bigger than he’d first supposed, a lot bigger. Then, as his surroundings grew clearer, he made out the bulky form of what looked like a massive pillar about a dozen feet in front of him. Following its length up into the shadows overhead, he guessed right away that it must have towered at least thirty feet high before its upper reaches vanished in the gloom. Looking further, he began to see that other shapes, other pillars, dotted the floor space farther back in the room. He wasn’t in any typical Cairo basement, that was for sure! Then, guessing that his captors were most likely involved in the illicit antiquaries trade, he concluded that he must have been taken to a site known only to local tomb raiders. Of course! He’d wondered where the latest batch of articles for sale had come from, information that Mehmed had been reluctant to tell him.
But then, thoughts of Mehmed gave him a new idea.
“Hey, you men,” he croaked in the direction of the voices. “Do you know Mehmed Makmoud? He’s a dealer…he can vouch for me.” The voices stopped but there was no reply to his query. Had he spoken in Arabic or English? He couldn’t remember. Concentrating, he tried again in Arabic. Silence. Then the voices continued but not directed at himself.
Giving up for the moment, Stalls leaned back against the wall of the room and only then noticed that there were markings on its surface. With his sight improving, he looked up and realized that the wall was covered in cuneiform writing, with hundreds of the familiar Egyptian characters covering it in scores of horizontal rows. Although not an expert, he was Egyptologist enough to recognize many of the characters and was able to piece together some of what was being communicated. The message seemed to harken back to pre-historic times and…Stalls stiffened in shocked realization at what he was really looking at. The hieroglyphics told the story of the fall of Acheron, the dark, snake worshipping empire that had preceded the historic Egypt, and even Stygia that came before Egypt in the time of the Hyborians. Almost nothing ha
d ever been recorded of ancient Acheron, only vague legends themselves buried in abstruse Egyptian records thousands of years old. Most researchers didn’t even give them much credence, supposing them to be merely the fanciful musings of a primitive people seeking some kind of explanation for their own mysterious origins. But here, Stalls guessed, was the most detailed description of the rise of Acheron in the dim centuries before recorded history, from a time when man himself was a rare species and quasi-humans and beast-men were the dominant life form on the planet. As his eyes ranged along the wall, Stalls noticed a single motif that recurred with uncomfortable regularity, that of a snake, the god Set, worshipped by the Acheronians in foul rites beneath black pyramids that rose out of the steaming swamps of an antediluvian Nile. As he continued to read, Stalls learned that when Acheron was finally overthrown and replaced by the slightly less fabled Stygia, the cult of the snake didn’t disappear but was simply adopted by its human conquerors.
Stalls’ concentration was broken by the sudden clatter of pottery or some such coming from the same direction as the voices he’d heard. When he turned his attention in their direction, he realized that his eyesight had improved to the point where he was at last able to see his captors.
They were gathered around a raised dais of some kind; he couldn’t tell how many of them there were, they kept moving in and out of the gloom beyond the dais. Robed in the familiar Egyptian jibbas, burnooses, and other kinds of loose-fitting clothes, three or four of them seemed busy fetching objects from a number of side tables while another figure hovered about what looked like a body that lay atop the dais. On the floor beside the dais lay an empty sarcophagus, its lid leaning against a wall a few feet away, which Stalls noticed was carved in the likeness of the occupant. Did these guys find a mummy? he wondered, excitedly.
Looking back at the objects resting on the tables, Stalls recognized them as Canopic jars, much like the one that had been stolen from him. Most had their stoppers removed and another was just being handed to what he considered to be the head grave robber. A scrape and the sound of an almost inaudible sigh of escaping air caught his attention and he noticed that the leader had just forced open one of the jars. What was he…?
Stalls’ frowned as the man tipped the jar until its shriveled contents fell into his open palm. The jars held the internal organs of mummified bodies, the better to keep them preserved for use when the deceased entered upon the afterlife. But what use could their contents be to these grave robbers? Did they intend on selling the jar and its contents separately to increase their profits? But no, the man who had opened the jar seemed to be reaching inside the mummy. What the hell? Was he placing whatever he got out of the jar inside the corpse?
Suddenly, there was the sound of tearing paper and he saw one of the men removing his jar from its wrapping.
“Hey, now wait a minute…” Stalls started to say until he realized he wasn’t in any position to protest. In fact, he was beginning to think he had bigger things to worry about than his stolen property.
…he couldn’t tell how many of them there were, they kept moving in and out of the gloom beyond the dais. Robed in the familiar Egyptian jibbas, burnooses, and other kinds of loose fitting clothes…
Again, the man handed the jar over to the head grave robber and again, the jar was opened with a hiss of escaping air. Despite the situation he found himself in, Stalls felt a pang of vindication as something slipped out of the jar when it was upended. Next, the first man took the jar back, as the second once again seemed to reach inside the mummy. It was the damnedest thing! Suddenly, it seemed as if they had finished whatever it was they were doing and the lead man made motions suggesting that he was closing up the mummy. When he was finished, he stepped back, joining the others at the foot of the dais. Now Stalls could see that there were four of them in all. There was a moment of silence, then the man who had worked over the mummy raised his arms and began some weird chant that was half spoken words and half sibilant whisper. The words weren’t in Arabic or any language Stalls could recognize. What were they…?
There was a soft scraping sound that drew his attention to the top of the dais. There, something was stirring and although what happened next was impossible, it took a few seconds for that realization to settle in as he simply watched with more amazement than horror.
The chanting of the four men continued at the same droning pace even as their body language indicated increasing excitement. In those few seconds of rational thought, before his brain broke down under the strain of holding his disbelief in suspension, Stalls saw the shriveled and wrinkled figure atop the dais actually begin to rise. The upper half of its body began to lift from the cold stone as if struggling to reach a sitting position. One gnarled hand slipped to the edge of the table searching for support even as the four figures moved forward, arms vaguely extended to help. But before they could reach the figure, and just as Stalls’ mind gave way in a scream of blind terror, the figure gasped, a puff of ages old dust exhaling from its open mouth, and fell roughly back to a supine position.
As Stalls, tears streaming down his cheeks, eyes wide despite an overwhelming urge to close them, kicked his feet against the stones of the floor, backing himself away from the insane sight, an audible and extended hiss of what could only be dismay escaped the hidden throats of the four men gathered at the dais. Together, they rushed the rest of the way up and looked carefully down at the recently animated corpse. A discussion followed that was filled with more hisses than spoken words until, finally coming to a halt, the four turned slowly in Stalls’ direction.
“No, no…” whimpered Stalls as he tried to scrabble farther back into the shadows. He didn’t know exactly what he was trying to say, only that he desperately wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else.
Slowly, one of the figures, the head tomb raider he thought, detached himself from the others and moved slowly toward Stalls in that strange, left to right, jerky movement that the burglar had used earlier that day. Suddenly, Stalls felt the fear and desperation in him begin to fade, his heartbeat returned to normal, the sweat turned cold against his skin, and all he could do was watch the figure, its movements now strangely hypnotic, as it moved closer and closer to him.
At last, the man stood directly over him as he looked up into the shadowed space inside his burnoose.
“Ssssso, manling,” the man hissed in Arabic. “It seemssss we were right to sssspare your life.”
“Wha…what…?” Stalls managed, not realizing just how much of a relief it was to him to hear some familiar words, no matter how mispronounced.
“You ssssaw our ritual?” said the man. It was not a question where an answer was expected. “And you have quessstionsss? Yesss? It isss to you we owe some thanksss for giving usss the sssucesss that we have had ssso far. You sssee, my brethren and I have been sssearching for the jar you purchasssed for a long time. Many yearsss, in fact. Yesss, many yearsss…” The voice stopped then, as if the speaker had slipped back into memory until, aware once more of where he was, he stepped back a bit and lifted an arm, indicating the wall against which Stalls still leaned for support.
“You are a man of learning…we know. I observed you earlier, ssstudying the writing on thisss wall. Do you know where we are? Yesss, ssstill in Cairo, but hidden, deep and dark, where no one has come for many centuriesss. But centuriesss are as nothing to usss,” he waved to the men behind him. “We worship Great Yig, father ssserpent and progenitor of Ssset, as the sssnake men have sssince before warm blooded man learned to walk.” He laughed then, or at least Stalls thought the intermittent hiss that escaped his hidden lips was meant to express humor. “Acheron wasss our home and from there we ruled the earth with the dreams of Yig as our guide. For untold ages, we were able to control our dessstiny through the precognitive giftsss bessstowed on usss by Yig. But even the father of sssnakesss could not predict the rise of men. At firssst, there were few of them and we enssslaved the ones that we found within the borders of our kingdom of s
hadows, but they bred like flies and soon overran usss. The age of beast-men was over. Ssslowly, we retreated into the swamps of the Styx and after the cataclysm that dessstroyed the Hyborian Age, the few of usss that remained became the ssstuff of legend among the men of Egypt, the land that rose from the ruins of Acheron and Stygia. Yig was again worshipped, but this time as Ssset, and there came a time when we dared dream of power once again. But with the rise of Nephren-Ka, it was not to be. He worshipped at the dark altar of Nyarlathotep, the sworn enemy of Yig and when he gained power over all of Egypt, he threw down the idols of Ssset and ssslew his worshippers. Once again, we, the brethren of Acheron who ssserved as the high priesssts of Ssset were persssecuted and forced into hiding. But we have long livesss, and Nephren-Ka was only human after all. Eventually, his people grew tired of his increasssing barbarities and threw him from power. He fled into hiding, no one except a few of his most dedicated followers knew where. And although the humans gave up their sssearch for him, the brethren never did. At lassst, however, we found him, buried in his sssecret sssepulchre but it wasss too late to exact our revenge. We were disssappointed, of courssse, until we looked at the walls of his tomb which told the ssstory of mankind far into the future and of Nyarlathotep’s final gift to his mossst loyal ssservant.”
He paused a moment and Stalls could hear the sibilant hiss of his breath.
“And then we realized that although Nephren-Ka had been our nemesssisss in life, he could now be our sssalvation in death! Oh, yesss, he could. You sssee, the final gift of Nyarlathotep to his mossst devoted follower had been that of ultimate prophecy which the former pharaoh ssspent the remainder of his life carving into the walls you sssee around you.”
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 16
