I see you all, starin’ at me. I see you all, judgin’ me. Yet I have seen so many of your faces from above, watched you suckle at my loins, and watched you drink of me even when I ran dry, while your men thought you were prayin’. You were, but to whom? When it came time for the service, I was as empty as my bottle, and yet I saw the women staring at my groin and licking their moist, painted lips-some painted for the first time, I am certain! - with snaking tongues. I delivered a sermon the words of which meant nothing and went nowhere, but not one of them noticed because the night heat and the serpent’s words were like an injection of raw lust. The men seemed not to follow the words, and the women all swallowed me with their eyes.
Don’t turn your eyes from the truth, now!
When I took the longbox from its shelf and felt the movement inside, I swear I heard the Lord tellin’ me to take up the serpent right then, to praise His name and His mastery over the evil one. I saw Molly in the corner of my eye, her face a blur. In the far corner, Mr. Molinetti-whatever, pencil and pad in hand and a smirk on his face. Near the door, the beatnik, here to guard Riley’s recent investment in my professional gambling career. No running for me, not today. I knew my collections would suffer greatly without the passion and the rattler. I listened to the voice I heard, and I told them all:
“Here I will take up the evil one and fear no harm, for my faith protects me! For He said, ‘Behold, I give you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you!’”
It’s my biggie out of Luke, and it set all them locals to swayin’ and speakin’ in tongues. Several hicks strummed instruments while others sang or hummed “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder.” I snapped the clasp off the left side of the longbox, reached in, and took out the limp forty-inch rattler that lay coiled within. Carefully, I set the longbox down on the lectern behind me, where no one could see the identical lid on the right side, and the other serpent shape it hid. A bit of sleight-of- hand, harmless in nature, and necessary for the illusion.
The rattler’s muscles rippled beneath my fingers as it awoke panicked and attempted to roll. I held it up over my head in both hands, the tail high on one side and the pointed head on the other, its cold reptilian eye starin’ at me with no expression. Its thin, forked tongue flicked out at me as the beast sensed danger. The tail rattles started their chatter and blended in with the screams-both of fear and of ecstasy - comin’ from the thickly-packed congregation. I heard them speakin’ in tongues, their voices raised in a babble straight from Hell, and my voice joined theirs in a moment, for the serpent had truly awakened and I saw when it gaped open its hinged jaw that the fangs were fully exposed and that the venom sacs were in place.
No! How could they be?
I found Molly’s eyes in the crowd around me, and saw a foreign emotion there, a steely glare I’d not seen before. Her stare spoke volumes. She had switched reptiles-the other compartment now housed the de-venomed rattler, while I held aloft the one whose fangs even now drooled poison into my eyes.
Before I could react, heave the serpent from my grasp or at least send it spinning to the floor, the head rolled lazily backward and then struck, fangs flashing in the poor light.
Once.
Twice.
And again.
The first and second strikes in my right forearm, the third in my shoulder, and almost immediately I felt the cold heat of the poison as it entered my blood like twin rivers mixing into one channel.
I dropped the serpent and saw it slither under the lectern, while around me the congregation continued their celebration, blissful and unaware of what had happened. Ignorant! I lowered my arms and felt the paralysis begin, the cold-hot invasion roiling through my veins like millions of tiny twirling serpents. My eyes met Molly’s and she licked her lips and whispered some words I could not hear, but I felt my arousal begin even as I sagged slowly to my knees. I knew then-knew without a doubt-that she was speaking to the serpent, replying to his requests.
The beatnik’s leering face loomed over me, and the first slug from my boot derringer tore through that vile mouth and showered the congregation with blood and bits of his brain. I lay back, ignoring the sudden quiet in the room, and put the second slug through the rattlesnake’s head, quieting that voice forever.
Still, they hear voices. You hear voices, don’t you?
Don’t you?
I don’t hear them, but I know they speak of me.
I saw Molitano-whatever there, too, and I lifted the derringer one last time and pulled the trigger, but it was a two-shot and empty. But seein’ him hug the floor and piss his pants almost made the whole thing worth it, it sure did.
I know I’ve been babbling, but my throat is dry. Bone-desert dry. The paralysis is startin’; the light’s fadin’ from the outer edges of my vision.
And now I lay among you clods, awaitin’ the moment, blind and powerless. And thirsty, so very thirsty.
The serpent said it would be so. And he was right, wasn’t he? So right…
* * *
THE GREAT BELZONI
and THE GAIT OF ANUBIS
By John Balfour Hudson
(as edited by W. D. Gagliani)
Published by Amazon.com; Honorable Mention
in THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY & HORROR (20th edition)
Prologue
Cambridge 1960
It had been long and terrifying, watching our father die his torturously slow death, but on a quiet Wednesday morning in spring he waved us closer and gestured for our attention. With Nurse seated nearby, wiping the dark bloody discharge dribbling steadily from his nose, we huddled over his bedside, my siblings and I. His hoarse whisper barely reached us.
“Sarcophagus.”
Fatigue from the effort to speak the syllables beaded his flaccid face. His eyes seemed to liquefy before us, no longer really his eyes at all. Then he stiffened, expiring with the quiet dignity of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, for whom he was named.
John Balfour Hudson.
Sarcophagus. That deathbed utterance, like the deathbed itself, haunted me many a day. I wondered to what crypt he had referred. What could be so important as to occupy his mind even as the final curtain fell before his eyes? Yes, my father’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had indeed spent years in and around Egypt during their speckled military careers. These tales had been in our family as long as I could remember, though they seemed hazy and somehow mythical in nature, as if they’d never truly happened. I was not to understand the significance of his final word until the disposition of my father’s considerable estate was well underway.
Toward the end of the long process of divesting ourselves of the many possessions accumulated by so many adventurer ancestors (not the least of which was a library packed with thousands of volumes on hundreds of topics), we undertook to inventory the contents of the attic. The family manse had undergone renovations on at least three occasions, but the attic had remained largely untouched. Indeed, it had been locked years before at my father’s instructions, and so a locksmith was hired to secure our entrance to the chamber, in which lay stacked an endless series of crates. Surely it can be of no surprise that one of the crates, a long and solidly-built affair, contained a sarcophagus brilliant with gold and blue highlights which shone brightly under our lamps. After our local workmen had lugged the piece down to the now bare study, my siblings and I stood around it, awed, until my brother Jonathan finally dared take hold of the worn cover. I hastened to take the other end, while our sister Hannah awaited the riches we would find within. To our surprise, when we swung the elaborately carved cover out of the way, what captured our attention was a large number of numbered Canopic jars standing in close ranks, their godheads staring at us with tiny ruby eyes.
This was the legacy of which our father breathed his last to warn us? It cannot seem unduly disrespectful of us to have displayed our disappointment, and so we did - until I consented to break
the seal on the carved jar marked with the crude number “one.” Inside reposed a tightly-rolled scroll secured with a brittle wax seal, and I removed from it what turned out to be the first of a long series of first-person accounts set down by our great-great-grandfather, Colonel John Balfour Hudson, before his knighthood was attained in 1855.
These accounts, of which this writing forms the introduction, speak eloquently for themselves: adventures great and small in faraway lands, in the company of a forceful companion and often facing incredible adversaries. Plans are to gather them together to form a unique volume, interest in which will surely provide our family with the legacy we sought when we set upon our quest to locate the sarcophagus our father had guarded so closely all these many years. Believe or disbelieve, dear reader (as my ancestor was wont to say), the choice will be yours.
From the Notebooks of John Hudson
June 1815
Arrival in Alexandria
It was a sea journey best left undescribed. That is, dear reader, undescribed in this manuscript. I have set forth even the accounts of our more eventless travels but within a separate diary in order to avoid making the reading of these accounts too heavy and onerous a task. Suffice to say that the Mediterranean has rarely been so capricious, and everyone in our expedition spent the majority of the journey miserably reclining on pest-ridden sickbeds.
Our arrival in Alexandria occasioned some rejoicing, until we learned from a crusty harbour pilot that the plague had grown in proportions once again, and so we sailed the four days on up the Nile delta to Cairo, a city which we knew would offer us less of the amenities a seaport such as Alexandria might offer, with its many European residents. We prayed for our countrymen on these foreign shores and set sail along the banks of the wide Nile.
I had been a bit of a knockabout since that Saracen blade had severed my right Achilles tendon even as I killed its wielder, who was not a Saracen, with one well-placed ball from my pistol. I’d been a King’s Guard once, until they refused to continue paying my pension after that scrap in Scotland, and then I’d become a bit of a rogue and mercenary in various other scraps and diversions. But there was the remainder of the Spanish treasure, what portion of it which hadn’t been returned to its watery grave, so I wouldn’t be needing His Majesty’s largesse for the rest of my life.
But it was adventure I sought, and it was adventure which brought me to the employ of one Giovanni Battista Belzoni (or G.B., as I’d often call him, to his great displeasure). The fact is, I saved his life once and that is why - after he offered me travel and a steady diet of exotic foods and stomach pains and adventure - he would never release me, though sorely tempted was he on occasion. His ego could not let him admit he had made a mistake with me, and so he turned a blind eye to my tendencies toward sarcasm.
Belzoni was a giant of a man, a bearded Paduan who had left his native land to seek his fortune in London, which was where I’d met him as he pranced around a stage billed as The Great Belzoni, the Patagonian Sampson, lifting a full dozen men with his arms and calling it the Human Pyramid. You see, even then he had his mind on Egypt and the riches we had only recently been made aware of by some previous explorers, many of them Italian as well, but some of them French and English.
This was where I’d saved his life, for his great size had stirred some sort of strength contest in a dank alley behind the Wells theater, and one of the thugs had managed to work his way around Belzoni with a dirk held high in one paw. Fortunately I’d become as skilled with a thrown cane as with a pistol, and the hooligan had gone home that night with a broken jaw and an eye he’d never use again. So great was Belzoni’s gratefulness that he hired me on the spot as an assistant and sometime bodyguard. It was more than a week before I learned of his plans, you see, and by then I was attached to the big Mameluk (a name I would give him after we arrived in Egypt, but which suited him even then).
“Hudson,” he said one night, his accent preventing the correct pronunciation and rendering me as ‘Hoodson,’ “this theater work is only until I save up enough to mount an expedition to Egypt, and today is the day I have the right amount.” Belzoni spoke English rather better than has been chronicled. It was his ploy, appearing to lack vocabulary.
“This about that machine you want to build for the Pasha, or whatever?”
“Yes, Hudson, I can build my invention, the hydraulic water mover for the Bashaw, Mohamed Ali, who has commissioned it. And there may be some work for us as acquiring agents too, eh? Egypt is like a closed book for us here, but maybe we can open it.”
“Well, I’m game,” I replied, seeing as how adventure was lacking right then from my life, perhaps forever. “Double my salary.”
The Italian laughed his booming guffaw. “Done, Hoodson. And a share of the wealth we find, eh?”
Arrival at the Palace
So we set off, and eventually our road led by coach and ship to Cairo, in the shadow of the Pyramids, as it were, whereupon a camel driver agreed to lead a small caravan of asses to the palace of Belzoni’s new employer, the Bashaw - ruler of Egypt and once himself an Albanian mercenary with many a conquest under his ample, jewelled belt. G.B. and I were accompanied by two small-time merchants who’d traveled with us, and two seasoned travelers who had served as interpreters and become part of the Belzoni expedition partly due to one’s knowledge of engineering and the other’s experience with the locals, Turks and Arabs alike. To Belzoni’s credit, he had learned much from these men during the weeks at sea, and he employed most of his knowledge immediately upon our arrival.
The city was a mosaic of domes and minarets protruding from criss-cross streets narrower than any Whitehall alley and yet trod upon by multitudes in full flowing burnooses of many colors, baskets in hand or animals in tow, the haze of cooking fires and smoking dens hanging over dark doorways and the occasional flash of silver-mounted weaponry at the sills of huge gaping windows overlooking our route. The sounds and smells were hypnotic. Our animals trod on open sewers, which lent the air an earthiness which warred with the spice until the mélange became a dizzying perfume both sacred and profane.
I indicated to G.B. the looks our group drew as we drove deeper into the maze of alleys, the hands resting on pommels of hefty, curved Damascus blades, their hilts inset with jewels and marked by silver filigree.
“Yes, Hudson,” he whispered hoarsely, “they don’t appear to like us very much. Too many Europeans, eh? We are the unknown to them, even more than they are unknown to us.”
He was philosophical, was Belzoni, even while under the guns of heathens. The brace of loaded pistols in my belt relieved my concerns somewhat, and the knowledge that everyone in our party was so armed. I was happy to know the Signora Belzoni, Sarah, had remained aboard ship, for the presence of a white woman would have made our situation more tenuous with the grim populace. As we rode past a market square, it seemed all commerce came to a halt as hooded eyes stared past us with vague disapproval. No women were to be seen in the market, and in fact any women we’d glimpsed during our journey from the docks were fully covered in the way of these Mohamedans, only their intense eyes left to glance at us and away again quickly.
The Bashaw’s palace was a sprawling block of columns and towers jutting from the center of the citadel, and our caravan was accorded entrance into the great courtyard by a cadre of surly guardsmen. There we learned that a soldiers’ revolt had begun, leading to the looting of Cairo shops and bazaars by renegade factions, and that the Bashaw would have his hands full, seeing as how only portions of the armed forces might be loyal to him. Given lavish quarters, we were allowed to wait for an audience.
When time came, a day hence, Mohamed Ali Bashaw met us in some sort of semi-formal sitting room, servant-operated fans overhead and a view of the harbor from the large opening in the wall through which some of the city’s clatter filtered. The Bashaw was a short man of wide girth but solid, white-bearded and resplendent in a European-style uniform modeled on that of the recently-departed Fren
ch, with a gold turban crowned by a single jewel covering his head. His English was superb.
“I trust your stay here has so far found your approval,” he said, uttering his first words. We knew then that he did not stand on ceremony, a fact which G.B. would misinterpret as a lack of business acumen.
“We are honoured to have the pleasure of your company, Sire,” said G.B., sweeping down in a huge bow which seemed to delight the Bashaw. The rest of us went ignored for some time then, as the two principals chatted about mechanics and our journey, while the rest of us set about some fruits and nuts spread out amongst our cushions. Despite the Bashaw’s good humour, I could sense there was a darkness behind his sharp eyes, a preoccupation on his mind. I wondered if G.B. had sensed it, too, but then the Bashaw suddenly halted his stream of pleasantries to inform us outright of his troubles.
“I am sure you’ve seen evidence of the insurrection just begun among some of our armed forces,” he began warily. “I can assure you that the instigators are even now being sought and arrested. We do not brook such disrespect for long, and my Syrian cavalry will make short work of the remaining pockets. That is one problem.”
G.B. leaned closer, his giant hand snatching a peach from a basket before him. “You have other problems? Perhaps we are of some assistance?”
The Bashaw seemed troubled then, as if vexed. Should he tell us, strangers, of some local scandal? Emotions warred within and were visible on his hard, wise visage.
“You saw the great Pyramids not far from the city, yes?”
We nodded, duly awed.
“Something is happening there, something not explainable in simple terms. I cannot rely on my advisors or my loyal army in this case, yet the implications are such that I cannot ignore the situation for long.”
G.B. assured him that we were willing to help, sensing an opportunity to increase our future business dealings. The Bashaw, for his part, was a great believer in bringing European goods and designs to his country, and so his decision was quickly made.
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