Damned by the Ancients

by Catherine Cavendish

  Now, though, the atmosphere had changed. The voices were growing closer. Different voices. A child. A girl, by the sound of her. A man’s voice. With a chill, Paula recognized it.

  Emeryk Quintillus.

  Her nemesis.

  The mists parted to reveal a girl’s bedroom. Paula recognized the surroundings. She had lived there once. When she had had a body and, so she thought, a happy marriage. Undetected by the blond-haired child, Paula floated up by the ceiling, looking down on a strange scene. A doll’s funeral. The child must be mentally disturbed. Or maybe she had lost her own mother and this was a way of coping. Paula hoped not.

  The girl paused and looked around her. Had she sensed Paula’s presence? She picked up one of the dolls and smoothed her hair. Then she started chattering again in German.

  Paula could see no one else in the room. The girl liked to talk to herself. So had she when she was this girl’s age. No harm in that.

  If she was alone.

  Paula became aware of a familiar shape in the corner of the room. The hat, beard, hair. And he knew she was there.

  He became more visible with every passing second. The black holes where his eyes should be seemed to watch her. There was no discernible expression on his face. He spoke to the child and she replied. Paula didn’t understand one word, but he pointed at her and the child looked up. She nodded and smiled.

  The girl could see her.

  Mist descended once again and the room faded from view. The voices grew more distant and disappeared altogether, to be replaced by the usual whispers.

  The familiar cold breath on her neck preceded a different voice. Harsher. Commanding. Arsinoe.

  “Your spirit will enter the girl. Quintillus must have my sister and, locked together as you are, her spirit will go with yours.”

  “No,” Paula protested. “I won’t do it. She’s just a child.”

  “You will do this. Those who went before her were wrong. Damaged. They were impure because they had lost the innocence of a child. I know that now. The truth has been revealed to me. This girl will be the vessel the gods will use to bring my sister to him. This time he will have her and I, Arsinoe, will finally be avenged.”

  “Bring back Cleopatra in the body of a child? The girl hasn’t lived yet.”

  “She will allow it.”

  “She’s too young to give her consent to anything.”

  “You will do this, or face oblivion.”

  “Then oblivion it must be. I won’t take a child’s life.”

  “You don’t have to. I will do it for you.”

  A violent tug dragged Paula’s spirit downward. The mists cleared again and the child lay on her back on her bed. In her hand, she clutched the doll swathed in black. The “dead” doll.

  “Forgive me, child.”

  Paula’s consciousness floated to the surface as the little girl retreated into the shadows of her mind, and Cleopatra stirred.

  Chapter 10

  “You must have seen it, Ryan. The expression in her eyes. It’s not Heidi.”

  “You’re seriously asking me to believe that our little girl has been possessed by someone who goes around rewriting entire books.”

  “It’s not the whole book. The last chapter. Maybe it was some kind of sick joke. Look, that doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is that something in this house has attacked our daughter. You weren’t there. You didn’t experience what I did.”

  “Apparently, Heidi wasn’t there, either. She’s just told me she doesn’t know what you’re talking about. She was reading when you came in and started yelling at her, shouting all sorts of rubbish.”

  Yvonne stared at Ryan. “She told you that?”

  “Just now when I went up to see her.”

  “But that’s preposterous. She was suspended two feet in the air—”

  “I know that’s what you told me, but Heidi was adamant it didn’t happen. You can’t both be right.”

  “Then she’s wrong. I know what I saw. You can see it in her eyes. It’s like another, much older person is looking at us. Couldn’t you tell at all?”

  “I’m sorry, Yvonne, but this is crazy.”

  “So is what is happening in this house.”

  Ryan made for the door. “I’m going out for some air.”

  “You’ve only been home ten minutes.”

  “Really? It feels a lot longer.”

  Yvonne watched as he left, slamming the front door behind him. She glanced up the stairs. Somehow, she would make sense of this.

  She tried Heidi’s door. Locked. She never locks her door.

  “Heidi? Open the door please.”

  No reply.

  Yvonne knocked. “Heidi, please open this door, I need to talk to you right now.”

  From behind the closed door, she heard shuffling and whispers.

  “Heidi, who’s in there with you?”

  The door unlocked but didn’t open. Yvonne took a deep breath and turned the handle.

  Her daughter sat on her bed, a defiant look on her face. She was frowning and her expression held what was almost contempt.

  “Heidi, what is all this about? Your dad tells me you said I went crazy in here earlier. He said you denied what we both plainly saw. What we were a part of.”

  Heidi fixed her with a steady gaze. Yvonne’s mixed emotions of confusion and fear surged to the surface. She wanted to shake the truth out of the girl but she held back.

  “Nothing happened. You came in and started shouting at me, telling me I was someone else.”

  “But you are, aren’t you?”

  “My name is Heidi Mortimer. I’m nine years old. I live at Villa Dürnstein.” She then repeated everything in German—at least it sounded to Yvonne like a translation. As if she had meticulously researched her role. But then this is what she had been taught to say some years earlier when she started school, in case she became lost and needed help. Name, age, address…

  “Heidi, or whoever you are, I’m losing patience.”

  “That would be such a shame.” The man’s voice came from behind her. Terror chilled her blood. He slowly moved around her until he stood in front of her. Heidi sat, immobile.

  “I am Emeryk Quintillus.”

  Yvonne told herself he wasn’t there. He couldn’t be there.

  “But I am here. You can see me, can’t you?”

  So he could read her thoughts?

  “You’ve been dead for more than a century.”

  “Yet here I am. Here we are. And you are going to help me, so that I may help you.”

  “What have you done to my daughter?”

  Quintillus made a sweeping gesture to the child on the bed.

  “You know that isn’t her. You’ve done something to her. Bring her back.”

  “All in good time. We have work to do first. Work for which I will require help. Your help and that of the gods.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You will come with me.”

  Heidi got off the bed. Yvonne had no choice. Her limbs made her decisions for her and she automatically followed Quintillus, with Heidi bringing up the rear.

  In the kitchen, Quintillus approached the basement door. He pointed at the lock and it turned. The door swung open, releasing the moldering stench of death, which sent Yvonne reeling and coughing. Quintillus ignored her and marched on. Yvonne staggered but caught up with him.

  Quintillus led them down the stairs, through the old kitchen, down the corridor, and through the first door, into the room with the hieroglyphics. He then took them through to the far door, pointed at it, and it too swung open.

  A new and more repulsive stench smothered Yvonne like a rotting shroud. She retched and swallowed bile. She put her hand over her nose but the smell of putrefying flesh was too pervasive.
Again and again she retched. The room was lit with scores of candles. Two bodies lay haphazardly on the floor as if thrown there by someone who cared nothing for them or for their dignity in death. One wore a pentacle around her neck. Her flesh had turned a hideous greenish blue. The decomposing skin crawled with wriggling maggots, feasting on the suppurating bodies. Their clothes were drenched with leaking body fluid. The smell of sulfur infested the air and another sickening corpse stench rivaled it.

  Yvonne could hold it no longer. She vomited a stream of yellow bile, heaving until she could barely breathe. Quintillus watched—a dark, impossible presence.

  Yvonne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You killed her. The woman who lived here before. Paula Bancroft.” Surely it had to be her. She had no idea as to the identity of the other woman.

  “If you wish your daughter to return, you will not concern yourself with that.”

  “What have you done with her?”

  “She is quite safe. For now.”

  “What do you want with her? She’s a child. A harmless, innocent child. If you must take someone, take me. Let her go.”

  “Admirable, Mrs. Mortimer. A mother’s love for her child.”

  “Then let her go.”

  Quintillus ignored her. He raised his hands upward. Heidi stepped forward to stand beside him. Yvonne watched the scene in horror.

  Quintillus began to chant. Heidi echoed the chants, but her voice was no longer that of a child. A woman. Her attention kept straying toward one of the bodies—a look of sadness, longing even, on her face.

  It’s her body.

  The woman in the girl caught her eye and looked swiftly away, but in that one brief glance, Yvonne knew she had seen tears in her eyes.

  The chanting increased. Quintillus raised his voice. A distant rumbling gave way to a swirling white mist. A lion’s roar. A figure emerged, with the face of a lioness, the body of a woman, dressed in the manner of the gods of ancient Egypt, holding a staff. She took her place to the left of Quintillus. Still the mist billowed. Another creature emerged. The body of a man with the head of some fantastic beast with two tall ears that jutted directly upward from the top of his head. His snout was doglike. He carried a staff and an ankh and stood on Quintillus’s right, next to Heidi who seemed oblivious to the presence of this frightening being.

  “Set, the god of chaos, violence, and war. And Sekhmet, the warrior goddess,” Quintillus said. “I have summoned them. They will bring her to me. My queen will finally be mine.”

  A chasm opened beneath Yvonne’s feet. She fell—tumbling through black space. Indistinct shapes flew past her. Her speed gathered momentum, flying deeper into nothingness.

  A void.

  Chapter 11

  Yvonne slowly returned to consciousness as she tried to make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings. She lay on some kind of ledge with no idea how she had got there. All she could remember was falling. After that, blackness. Above her, smooth, granite-like walls stretched as far as her eyes could make out. Below her, the cries and moans of souls in anguish rose from a seemingly bottomless pit. She must get out of here or she would join them. She struggled to her feet and stroked the smooth surface of the wall. Trying to find footholds wouldn’t be easy. In fact, right now, it seemed an impossibility. Thoughts of Heidi and Ryan poured into her brain. Please let me make it out of here.

  Then, she was back. Waking up in her bed, her husband beside her in the quiet, dark house. It took her a moment or two to focus. Reality had lost some of its meaning. Inevitable, as her dreams were fast becoming more real than her waking hours.

  Heidi. Whatever was going on centered on her. It wanted her. Her youth. Her vitality. It wanted to suck her very life essence from her. To drain her.

  No.

  She got out of bed as carefully as she could so as not to disturb Ryan. Tying her robe around her, she padded out and across the landing to Heidi’s room. The door stood slightly ajar and she peered around it.

  The moon cast silver fingers of light across her sleeping daughter. Yvonne watched her for a few minutes as her brain finally settled. She had experienced the nightmare to end all nightmares, but at least that was all it had been, she hoped. No, she must suppress these crazy thoughts. Heidi was a normal, imaginative child. With someone else’s spirit inside her.

  Yvonne tiptoed in, bent down, and kissed her sleeping daughter’s forehead. She stirred a little and Yvonne smoothed a stray strand of hair away from her face. She stepped back. Wide awake now, she knew there was little point in trying to sleep. She went downstairs and made herself a cup of hot tea, which she took into the library.

  A distinctive cigar smell met her at the door and she almost expected to see curls of smoke wafting across the room. There were none.

  She snapped on the lights, blinking furiously as her eyes adjusted to the brightness.

  Something on the table caught her attention. Something that shouldn’t be there.

  She picked up the folded sheet of paper and opened it. A short letter, written in exquisite copperplate handwriting—in German, so she would have to wait until Ryan was around to translate it. But she could make out the names. Fräulein Gabriele Ziegler and Emeryk Quintillus. And the date and location. Berlin, 18 June, 1900.

  A time was mentioned—ten thirty—along with the Lorenz Museum. Maybe Quintillus was arranging to meet this person. But what was that note doing here?

  The lightest of touches fluttered across her shoulders. Yvonne spun around, expecting to see Ryan. He must have snuck up on her.

  No one stood there.

  But Yvonne knew she wasn’t alone.

  The mantelpiece clock chimed once…twice…three times.

  But it couldn’t have.

  The clock had no chime.

  Behind her, a glass ornament shattered. Shards of crystal scattered across the floor.

  A deep sigh echoed off the walls.

  From inside the walls.

  Yvonne raced out of the room and up the stairs. She tore into the bedroom and dived under the duvet, cuddling up to Ryan. She draped her arm over his chest, touching skin. But not Ryan’s skin. Something scaly, withered. She snatched her hand back.

  He smelled different.

  Not the usual Armani fragrance lingering after his shower.

  This Ryan smelled of decay, the sickly odor of death.

  Yvonne shot out of bed and hit the light switch.

  The figure turned and Yvonne stared into the empty black eyes of a long-dead Emeryk Quintillus. His mouth opened and scarab beetles crawled out, their carapaces clicking together as they swarmed.

  Her screams echoed through the house.

  Footsteps thundered toward her. She screamed louder.

  “Yvonne. It’s all right. It’s okay. What happened to you?” Ryan cradled her in his arms as she sobbed and trembled. Heidi stood in the doorway, rubbing tired eyes that opened wider as she took in the scene.

  “Wha…wha…what Heidi said she saw…” Yvonne pointed at the bed. “I saw him, too. I had a nightmare about him. At least I thought it was a nightmare…but this was different. I was awake and…it was…the same…man. Quintillus. He was in our bed.” She choked back ceaseless sobs.

  Ryan went over to the bed. Pulled back the duvet. “There’s no one there.”

  “No. Not now. But…”

  “I believe you, Mum.”

  Ryan shot Yvonne a glance tinged with annoyance. “Now I’ve got both of you at it.”

  What would it take for him to believe?

  “Ryan, stop sticking your head in the sand. Emeryk Quintillus is real. I don’t know how, but he’s real. He’s as real as you and me. And he’s in this house. The trouble is I don’t know why he’s here except that it involves Heidi.”

  “He told me he’s going to show you.”

  Yvonne and Ryan
stared at Heidi. “What else did he tell you?” Yvonne asked.

  “He told me he and the other lady were going to make some magic.”

  “What other lady?” Ryan asked.

  “The lady who lives in here.” She tapped her head and her chest.

  Cold dread filled Yvonne’s mind.

  Ryan’s anger boiled over. “Heidi, what are you talking about?”

  “Ryan, don’t speak to her like that. You’ll frighten her.”

  “I think she’s cornered the market on that already, thank you, Yvonne.”

  Yvonne ignored him. She motioned Heidi to sit next to her on her side of the bed. “Come on, love, tell me what the man said to you. Everything you can remember.”

  “He spoke to the lady inside me. Her name is Paula. She asked me to be quiet and shut my eyes for a while. It was as if I was sitting in a room on my own but I could hear everything that was being said. The lady told the man that she wouldn’t do it.”

  “Wouldn’t do what?”

  “I don’t really know. Something that made her very sad. But the man said she had to. That Set would make her. Then the lady cried and the man got angry.”

  “She’s had a nightmare,” Ryan said.

  “Stop it, Ryan. Let her speak. Go on, Heidi, then what happened?”

  “The lady told me I could come out, so I did and she went quiet.”

  An image of the decomposing corpses in the basement flooded Yvonne’s mind. Now this…

  “And what about the man? What did he do?” Yvonne asked.

  “He went away, but he said he would make it happen. I didn’t like him so much this time, Mum. He seemed cruel. Not friendly like he has been.”

  Yvonne took her hand. “I don’t think he’s a very friendly man, Heidi. When did this happen?”

  “Soon after I went to bed last night. I couldn’t sleep and that’s when the lady came out. She’s nice. She told me she didn’t belong inside me and she was very sorry but he had made her do it. She said she’s going to try and sort it out but she doesn’t know how.”

  “Do you think she will talk to me if I ask her?” Yvonne said.