The Monster Museum

by J L Bryan

  I'd assumed the ghost had been trying to lure her down to the caves, mainly because she'd been almost to the barred door to the cave when I'd caught up with her, and the caves had seemed like the big obvious danger at the time.

  Maybe he'd been sending Polly into the history exhibit for another reason, though.

  Near the end of the Tomb of History lay the supposed “ancient artifacts” from Egypt and Atlantis. Could one of those be tied to the Snake Man somehow?

  I returned to the main office, but looked into a different drawer of the old gray file cabinet. I rummaged past records for various old native artifacts, which included some black and white pictures of Leydan himself, in his younger years, scouring the local wilderness for arrowheads and spearpoints, and for the musket and cannon balls of more recent wars.

  The records for the ancient relics were quite thin. I saw no certificate of authenticity for the broken bricks of the Great Pyramid, nor for Julius Caesar's favorite goblet.

  The “magic mirror of Atlantis” had a typewritten story of its supposed discovery by one “Dr. Rutherford P. Exeter of the Oceanographic Society.” There was no contact information of any kind for Dr. Exeter nor his Society. Leydan had probably made it up.

  I did find a folder with surprisingly detailed records for the “cursed ring of the ancient Phoenicians.” They showed pictures of Leydan and a few young people, maybe high school or college students of the early 1960s, digging through the overgrown ruins of the long-abandoned Roman-style resort.

  He noted that the students had been paid in “class credit” for their work, meaning he'd been able to get them to work for free, I supposed.

  There were close-ups of the ring. The pictures were black and white, but I knew it was a golden ring inset with green jewels and etched with odd writing. A yellowed piece of paper next to it showed a slanted image of the ancient Phoenician alphabet, photocopied out of a book. Several of the letters had been circled in heavy marker.

  Given where I'd first seen it, right next to the supposed lost mirror of Atlantis, I hadn't paid the ring any attention. It seemed as if Leydan had found the ring to be genuinely worth researching.

  I doubted the ring was truly an artifact from thousands of years earlier, but maybe it was a real piece of jewelry instead of a fake costume piece. Perhaps it had been owned by one of the people who'd built the bathhouse; they'd clearly had an affinity for the ancient world, given the basilica-like design of the Curing Springs resort.

  Since my own knowledge of ancient Phoenician life wasn't particularly well-developed, I took a moment to look them up online.

  I read about Tyre and other ancient ports. I'd certainly heard of the largest Phoenician city, Carthage, an imperial capital that once controlled much of the Mediterranean. It had been destroyed by the ancient republic of Rome, after multiple wars.

  A pattern jumped out at me about the names of the ancient Carthaginian leaders: Hanno. Hannibal. Hamilcar. Himilco.

  “Hamilcar,” I said aloud. “Himilco.”

  Amil, the name that Snake Man called himself in his innocent boy-form, could be a shortened version of either name, or something similar to them.

  I flipped through the folder, looking for more about the ring.

  A note from a jeweler indicated that the ring was indeed made of gold and emeralds, but made no mention of the ring's possible origin.

  Beyond the jeweler's note was the last item: a simple mailing envelope, a bit yellow at the edges, its flap sealed shut with a thick blot of dried candle wax.

  The words “For the Curator” were written in ink on the front.

  “Hm,” I said aloud, taking it out and looking it over. I supposed Ryan was technically the new curator of the museum, and maybe I should have gone upstairs, woken him up, and asked permission to open the envelope. Or maybe it would have been more polite to wait until morning, when he awoke on his own.

  I wanted to know what was inside that envelope right away, though. It was the only hint of a lead I'd found in hours of looking through the files.

  So I picked up a long letter opener from the desk—it looked like a swordfish with big wacky eyes—slid it under the envelope flap, and sliced the envelope open.

  A handwritten page waited inside.

  I took a deep breath, pulled it out, and began to read:

  To the esteemed future curator of the Mountain Museum:

  First, allow me to congratulate you on arriving at such an excellent position! I trust you will share my dedication to overseeing and enlarging this amazing collection of valuables.

  I resisted the urge to snort at the idea of the dead squirrels and fake Egyptian artifacts downstairs as “valuables.” And I read on:

  Next...there is vital information that one must know about this particular artifact, labeled 'The Cursed Ring of Ancient Phoenicia!' As you may be aware, the engravings on its surface are indeed Phoenician, an alphabet from thousands of years past, ancestor to our own Roman one.

  I skimmed the part where he found the ring in the old Roman-style ruins, and read more closely his account of cleaning and trying to identify the ring's origin. This had taken some research on Leydan's part, including a visit to the University of Tennessee library to determine the language, though he was unable to decode the meaning of the inscriptions.

  It was in my workshop, working alone one night, that I discovered the most horrifying hidden properties of this ring. It was almost on a whim...though I now think it might have been more...as I held up the ring in the moonlight, it occurred to me to try it on my own finger.

  This may have seemed an act without much consequence, if not for what occurred next.

  Once I wore the ring, I was no longer alone in my workshop.

  Someone stood just outside the halo of light cast by my lamps, like a demon standing in the darkness outside the world, outside of God's grace—such was the mood of thought it evoked in me. The strange, cold presence made me recall fearful sermons I'd heard as a child, tales of torture and punishment in the world below, in the kingdom of the Devil and his fallen host. As a man of science, I am rarely given to such thoughts!

  What stood there, I first took for a large man, taller than almost any I'd seen outside the carnival...but no.

  It was no man.

  Its skin was like that of a reptile, and it smelled of stagnant lake scum.

  When it moved on me, I saw its eyes like dark pits, and the long teeth in its inhuman jaws. It had an animal head on a man's body, like an Egyptian deity.

  It scurried toward me on all fours, and it was then less like a man and more like alligator, and it seemed determined to snap my feet out from under me.

  This led me to climb up on my worktable.

  The shadowy gator-creature stopped where my feet had been. It seemed not fully substantial, with portions of it made of nothing but shadow and dark fog. But I saw its teeth, and smelled the rotten damp stench of it.

  Then it remained still, watching me, very like a hunting hound that has treed a raccoon.

  Finally, after this went on for some time, I managed to get up my courage. I thought of my drill sergeant in basic training, for some reason, and I barked at the reptilian thing: “Get back! Get away from me!”

  I had no expectation it would listen, but the creature actually backed away, to the far end of the room.

  “Stand up again,” I said, feeling emboldened. “Let me see you.”

  The apparition—I can think of no other term for it—complied, and became more fully formed, once again a horrific reptilian man.

  “All right,” I said. “Now...go back. Go back wherever you came from.”

  And it ran directly toward me.

  I was frozen on the spot, horrified by the unnatural thing, and the unnatural speed with which it moved. It leaped from the floor and hurtled toward me.

  I saw its face moving closer, its awful yellow teeth in its misshapen scaly head.

  I thought it would kill me.

  Then it was gone
.

  And suddenly my hand was freezing.

  I saw remnants of the apparition, a greenish-black fog twisting down in the cold air around my hand. The emeralds in the ring glinted as the last traces faded away.

  The ghostly reptilian entity, you see, is tied to the ring somehow. The wearer of the ring may summon it...and, as I have learned, command it.

  This is a dangerous power, and a dangerous entity indeed.

  It is my belief that this entity is the origin of the local 'Snake Man' legend centered around the old Romanesque ruins surrounding the warm spring.

  It is also my belief that this legend is best put down and forgotten, or at least reduced to mere frivolity. To this end, I have created the false and absurd 'Hand of the Snake Man' exhibit, thinking to undermine the local legend until no one believes it.

  The Snake Man must be kept in his prison, for his presence is dangerous, even to those who might command him.

  To this end, I implore you to leave the Phoenician ring locked in its place in the museum. It is indeed a treasure, but a dark and infernal one.

  And should the Snake Man stir, and again cause trouble...pitch the ring into the Bottomless Abyss, where it may be lost to man forever.

  With greatest sincerity,

  Leydan R. Aberdeen

  Founder and Curator, Dr. Weirdman's Mountain Museum of Monsters, Curiosities, and Ancient Mysteries

  “Well, as long as you're sincere,” I said, placing the letter onto Leydan's desk.

  That had certainly provided a couple of answers, but even more questions.

  I thought of how the Snake Man had shoved me off my feet.

  If Leydan could really control the strange reptilian ghost using the Phoenician ring...maybe he really had sent the Snake Man to kill Georgina's servant, and it had looked like the act of a wild animal. Davey's dying claim had been of an attack by the Snake Man.

  But why would Leydan have attacked Davey Bawden, her handyman? That wouldn't have changed the course of any legal action or local politics.

  Maybe the reptile-monster had misunderstood its orders and killed the wrong person. Leydan might have sent the ghost through the woods to Georgina's house, but it encountered Davey first and killed him instead.

  Later, though, Leydan succeeded in making Georgina herself disappear, perhaps with a better-laid plan, a better use of the Snake Man ghost, his abilities improved by practice, as he'd hinted in the letter.

  And maybe that was what he meant by the Snake Man being dangerous “even to those who might command him.” The power to send a spirit to kill someone...to literally get away with murder without even having to carry it out...that was dangerous indeed. And maybe Leydan knew it firsthand.

  Perhaps he'd felt guilty over using the ghost to kill his enemies, and had stopped before going on to kill Peter McWhartor.

  Or maybe I was going too far in suddenly pinning Leydan as a double murderer, but I'd established the means, motive, and opportunity for him to do it. He could command the Snake Man ghost, and he had a reason to want his neighbor to vanish, and if he was really clever, he'd even arranged an alibi for himself while the Snake Man went out and did it.

  This was still all conjecture, but one thing seemed certain...that ring was the problem.

  Get rid of it, and we might just exorcise the Snake Man from the museum, leaving Ryan's kids to live in safety and peace.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I headed past empty offices into the cobwebbed stairwell, trying to imagine a time when this place had been such a tourist attraction that it had required a whole team of employees to keep it running.

  Now the sagging old stairs groaned under my boots, making the only sound I could hear as I headed down.

  The cold, cavernous museum lobby wasn't much more welcoming. It was so dark and chilly that it felt like an extension of the caves below.

  I paused at the stamper I'd set up near the Tomb of History, just before abandoning my plans in frustration when the Snake Man hand turned out to be fake.

  I lifted the empty trap out, and then I turned to face the propped-open tomb door.

  An icy gust rolled out, as though the caves were exhaling their chill into the upper world. I supposed there might be air currents of some kind down there. The cave network surely had other openings, or at least it had that one narrow chimney in the “Throne Room.”

  I stepped through the tomb door. My flashlight sent a piercing white glare across the rusty artifacts of the Civil War, and the misshapen rusty iron pans and hammers of early settlers, and the stone tools of the natives before them.

  The Egyptian burial mask seemed to stare at me as I reached the end of the history exhibit, close to the icy draft from the barred door.

  The ring appeared innocuous enough in its case, the overwrought sign warning of its ANCIENT and CURSED nature making it seem all the more harmless, really.

  I read the descriptive placard:

  From ANCIENT PHOENICIA, it began, which could have referred to anywhere along thousands of miles of Mediterranean coastline, comes this lost and CURSED treasure! Once used in the worship of pagan crocodile gods. Now forbidden to all!!!

  Yeah, that wasn't exactly a strong argument for authenticity.

  Even if the ring was possessed by a ghost, I doubted it was really thousands of years old. More likely it had been fashioned much more recently, for someone who had a thing for dark magic and ancient civilizations. Maybe someone like Ithaca Galloway, the wealthy widow who'd purchased the Lathrop Grand Hotel in Savannah around the turn of the twentieth century and turned it, for a time, into a kind of salon for mediums, psychics, spiritualists, and anyone interested in the supernatural.

  I took out the overloaded key ring for the museum display boxes, and I sighed. I'd have to try each one, like Ryan had done earlier.

  A cold draft spilled into the already-chilly room, making me shiver.

  I looked up and down the exhibit, and even pointed my flashlight beam into the darkness beyond the cage-like door to the caves below. I didn't see anything, but it felt like someone was in there with me, watching me...which is not a great feeling.

  “Hello?” I said. “Amil?”

  There was no particular response, at least not one I could perceive. If something was in there with me, it remained silent and invisible.

  “If you're here, I'd rather see you,” I said. “You don't have any trouble showing yourself to others.”

  Still, no response came.

  “Also, I'd rather you not toss me around again,” I said. “I'm here to help. That's what I do. I help spirits like you find peace and move on. There's something holding you here, something from your life. I can help you let go of it. I can help you move on to a better world. That's what you want, deep down, isn't it?”

  I listened, and I watched. I didn't know whether to expect a voice, an apparition, or invisible hands seizing me, maybe knocking me over like they'd done before, maybe ripping me apart like they'd done to Davey Bawden—if my working hypothesis was correct.

  When I felt the jolt at my hip, I jumped and nearly screamed.

  It was just my phone, though, springing to life as someone decided to voice-call me at almost midnight, for reasons I could not begin to fathom.

  I drew it out of my pocket. Melissa was calling me. Not texting, but actually calling.

  I felt myself go cold. It had to be an emergency of some kind.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Ellie!” Melissa screamed, causing me to wince and pull the phone away from my ear a little. “Ellie!”

  “Yeah, it's me, what's wrong?”

  “It's Michael!”

  “What about him? Is he hurt?” I was already running toward the loading dock door.

  “No...he's not...himself.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, while the possible meaning of that was already sinking in. “Not...Clay?”

  “Yes!” Melissa shouted. “He must have been waiting there, down inside Michael, just hidi
ng...ever since...”

  I felt sick. Jacob had seemed sure that Anton Clay had fled Michael's body, abandoning the possession.

  Nothing was ever certain, though, in the shadowy world of ghosts.

  “He's attacking me!” Melissa shouted. “He already grabbed me and burned me. I'm over in your room, and I locked the door, and I shoved the bed against it, but...he's trying to get in. I think he'll burn the whole place down to get me. You have to stop him!”

  “I'm already on my way.” I bolted out to the loading dock, jumped down to the snowy parking lot, and headed for my van. “Call the fire department. Then try to pull some kind of sacred music up on your phone and blast that as loud as you can.” I turned my key, but the van was reluctant to start. “In fact, turn on that gospel channel on the hotel TV and max the volume. It might make him a little more reluctant to get in there.”

  My van finally started, and I drove through the parking lot, swerving and sliding on the snow in my haste to get back to town. I fishtailed for a moment, and my phone tumbled to the van floor. It slid under the passenger seat when I reached the main road, and I decided to keep driving rather than retrieve it.

  As I rushed down the road and around the now-familiar tight bend, I saw him.

  The figure wandered out just feet ahead of my van, his hat and jacket ripped and bloody, his pale eyes looking out at me from his bloodless face.

  Headlights approached from below, in the opposite lane. If I swerved to avoid the pedestrian, I'd have a head-on collision with that vehicle.

  “It's just a ghost,” I told myself, but it took all the willpower I had to stay the course, to plow right into the desperate-looking individual that I believed to be the ghost of Davey Bawden.

  Still, I cringed as I drove right into him.

  I tensed, waiting for a sickening bump or crunch at the impact.

  But it never came.

  I checked my side mirror to see the spot where he'd been, and that was when I realized the dead man was in the car with me.