Stolen Souls

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  In the rear of the van Sekhemib knelt down and cradled Meret in his arms. He called her name softly. She opened her eyes and sought his face in the darkness, darkness engendered both by the interior of the vehicle and her rapidly ebbing life.

  She tried to say his name, but was able only to gurgle through the blood. "Be at ease, my love," he whispered. "Thou diest. But thou shalt rise in due time, and we shall again dance upon the Nile banks and drink wine through reeds." He watched as the spark of life flickered and then went out in her eyes. He turned to Yuya, and saw that he was already dead.

  Sekhemib stood up and looked out the back of the van. Jasper Rudd had reloaded his revolver and was firing at him. He felt a bullet strike his shoulder, but it did not penetrate, and he ignored it. He stared at Jasper.

  "Get you now, you son of a bitch!" Jasper shouted, taking aim, but for some inexplicable reason he felt his right hand turning the steering wheel far to the left. He struggled to control his hand, but it continued to turn the wheel, and a few seconds later the patrol car drove off the thruway and careened wildly into the wooded expanse of land which formed the highway divider. He reduced his speed only slightly by depressing the brake, and came to a stop only when the car crashed headlong into a tree. Jasper was thrown forward into the windshield, which cracked and splintered from the impact with his forehead. He fell heavily back into the seat, bleeding freely from the lacerations he had suffered.

  "Sam, pull over," Sawhill said when he saw the patrol car come to a stop in a tangled heap before a now broken tree. "But Harriet's—" Sam began.

  "Harriet's alive. Jasper's probably injured. Now pull over!"

  Sam Goldhaber had never really thought about the seriousness with which some physicians took their oath before. Impressed, but still worried about Harriet, he pulled off the road and watched as Sawhill got out and ran over to the wreck.

  Sekhemib watched with grim satisfaction as his pursuers abandoned the chase. He returned to the front of the van and said, "Thou need not fear, Ahmed Hadji. We are safe."

  Hadji closed his eyes and breathed heavily. "Anet hrauthen, 'Anfiu," he muttered. "The lord Yuya and the lady Meret?"

  "They are dead, for the time being. But that will pass." Hadji nodded and smiled slightly. He was paying careful attention to the road as he reduced his speed. He did not see Sekhemib's furious eyes glaring at him.

  Fifteen miles away, in the morgue at HarrisonHospital, the son of the hospital's founder was unaware of the events which had been transpiring on the thruway. Dr. Douglas Harrison, the county medical examiner, was in the midst of the autopsy of the woman tentatively identified as Suzanne Melendez. He had already opened the chest cavity and removed the lungs and heart for measurement and weighing. Next would come the brain.

  This is the strangest thing I've ever seen, Harrison was thinking. The heart was almost hard to the touch, reminding him of coral. The lungs were similarly ossified, but small bits of them fell crumbling into the chest cavity as they were removed. Cutting through the leathery skin had been as difficult as slicing an overcooked steak of atrocious quality. Damndest thing!

  He heard a sound.

  Harrison turned around and stared over the rims of his bifocals. The corpse which had been positively identified as Gus Rudd was quivering on the slab. His arms and legs were vibrating and his open mouth was opening and closing spasmodically.

  The medical examiner gazed at the trembling cadaver with open-mouthed wonder. He left the body of Suzanne Melendez and walked over to Gus. Harrison leaned over and stared into the face of the corpse.

  "Jesus Mary and Joseph!" he muttered. Gus Rudd's eyes were open and were darting insanely back and forth. Harrison doubted the reliability of his own vision as he noticed the leathery skin beginning to smooth out and grow full, as the prunelike face of the dead man began to expand away from the skull and assume a human visage, as the fingers began to flex and the softening lungs began to struggle to draw air into themselves. When, a few minutes later, Gus Rudd sat up on the slab and started to scream, Harrison fainted.

  He was fortunate. The county medical examiner lay unconscious upon the cold floor of the morgue, unable to hear the frenzied cries issuing forth from the deranged mind of the police deputy. But more importantly, and more fortunately for his own subsequent mental health, he was unable to look back at the autopsy slab where the gutted body of Suzanne Melendez was coming briefly, but horribly, to life.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was late, very late, nearly three in the morning. The three men sat silently around the table in the office of the police chief, three glasses before them, a depleted bottle of bourbon in the middle of the table. None of them spoke. None of them moved. The only sounds were the incessant chirping of the crickets outside the window and the slow, steady ticking of the clock on the wall.

  The phone rang. Thomas Sawhill reached over and picked up the receiver and said in a depressed monotone, "Police station." He paused. "Yes, this is Dr. Sawhill. Have you . . ." He paused again, a long pause as he listened to the voice on the other end and nodded periodically. Roderick Fowles watched him intently. Samuel Goldhaber took the glass of bourbon from the table before him and raised it to his lips. They both waited, hoping for the best and expecting the worst. At last Sawhill muttered, "Yes. Thank you," and hung up the phone.

  He sat back wearily in the chair and said, "Nothing."

  "That was the state police?" Sam asked.

  He nodded. "Nothing. No sighting of the van we de scribed, no shipments of antiquities out of the country, no one fitting the descriptions we gave them trying to leave the country on any flight bound for Egypt. Nothing." He began to weep, and Sam pushed the glass of bourbon toward him.

  Roderick shook his head. "I can't believe this. All those years those things were in our attic. All those years."

  "I can't believe it either," Sawhill said, wiping the tears from his eyes. "But I have to believe it. I tried to speak to Gus before he was sedated. I saw what was left of Suzanne on the floor after it had crawled off the table in the autopsy room. It can't be true, but it must be true."

  "But how?" Roderick asked, pleading for some sense to be made out of it all. "It's impossible!"

  "Everything's impossible, until it happens," Sam said thickly. "Ancient gods!" He shook his head.

  "Did you ever read Dracula?" Sawhill asked. "Harriet loves that kind of book. She got me to read it."

  "What about it?" Roderick asked.

  "There's a character in that book who said something like, a vampire's greatest power is our refusal to believe he exists." Sawhill sighed. "That's what has happened here." He took a swig of bourbon and then stared pensively into the empty glass. Then he threw it angrily at the floor. It shattered loudly, but the other two men sat motionless, as if their senses had been dulled by the shocks of the day's events. "Damn it all!" Sawhill shouted. "We knew the whole story, we knew all the facts! It was all staring at us, all along, but we wouldn't even give it a thought. Blind, blind!" He trembled violently and then convulsed in weeping.

  Roderick reached over and placed his hand on Sawhill's forearm. "It was all just too fantastic. Don't blame yourself, old fellow."

  "Of course not," Sam agreed. "You can't be expected to accept as true ideas that run contrary to everything you've ever been taught. This is the twentieth century, after all! Walking dead! Living mummies!" He laughed humorlessly. "It's ridiculous!"

  "But it's true," Sawhill muttered, wiping a tear from his cheek.

  Sam Goldhaber nodded grimly. "That's the catch. It's true. Ancient priests of ancient gods who drink human souls and live forever, and an age-old cult which has been trying to find their mummies for nearly four thousand years. All true." He sighed. "God help us, it's all true."

  They were silent for a while. Roderick picked up the bottle and poured some bourbon into Sawhill's empty glass. Then he asked, "How is Chief Rudd?"

  "Jasper?" Sawhill responded weakly. "Broken neck, multiple lacerations, skull fra
cture. He's in bad shape, but at least he didn't sever his spinal cord. He should recover. It'll take a while, though."

  "And his brother?"

  Sawhill shrugged, and Sam said, "He's in the hospital too, under heavy sedation. I spoke with—what's his name, Tom? Harrison's intern?"

  "Markowsky," Sawhill muttered. "Jake Markowsky."

  "Right. He said that they're going to arrange to have Gus sent to KingsParkStateHospital."

  "Is that a lunatic asylum?" Roderick asked.

  Sam smiled. "They're called psychiatric hospitals nowadays. Yes, it is. Poor Gus. He has no idea what's happened to him. He didn't stop screaming until they knocked him out." Sam shook his head sadly. "The poor kid."

  The morose silence descended upon the three men once again. Only the ticking of the wall clock and the sobs which burst occasionally from Thomas Sawhill disturbed it. At last Roderick whispered, "But why Pearson?"

  "Hmmm?" Sam asked.

  "Pearson, my solicitor. Why did Hadji kill him?"

  Sam considered this for a moment. "There are a number of possible explanations, I think," he said. "It was from Pearson or from his records that Hadji learned where the mummies had been shipped. Perhaps he didn't want Pearson to call you and warn you about him. Or maybe it was a cultic thing, a human sacrifice. Remember what Jasper told us, about the murder looking like a ritual murder?"

  "They practice human sacrifice?!" Sawhill asked, aghast at the thought. "Then Harriet—maybe Harriet—"

  "No, Tom, no," Sam said firmly. "That isn't rational. They seem to have gone to a good deal of trouble to take her with them. They wouldn't do that if all they wanted was someone to kill. They want her as a hostage, perhaps."

  "But they aren't rational," Roderick objected. "They're madmen."

  Sam shook his head. "I'm sorry, Your Lordship, but I disagree. They're murderers, religious fanatics, evil, to be sure. But they are as rational as you and I. Everything they've done so far has had a logical purpose."

  The silence returned, a silence born of impotence and sorrow. Then a heavy sigh broke forth from Sawhill's throat and he rasped, "Harriet!" in a voice filled with mourning and loss.

  "We'll do something, Tom," Sam said. "There must be something we can do."

  "What the hell can we do?" Sawhill asked desperately. "We don't even know where she is! She may be dead already!" His weeping overwhelmed him again, and Sam and Roderick watched him uneasily, unable to give meaningless comfort, speechless, numb.

  The phone rang again. Sawhill reached for it, hoping that the state police might be calling with encouraging news. "Hello?" he said eagerly.

  "Hello? To whom am I speaking?" The voice seemed somehow familiar, though muted by the apparent distance of the phone call.

  "This is Dr. Thomas Sawhill, at the Greenfield police station. Who is this?"

  "Oh, yes, Dr. Sawhill! How nice to speak to you!"

  "Who is this?!"

  "This is your friend, Ahmed Hadji. I trust you are well?" Sawhill sprang to his feet. "Hadji, you son of a bitch! Where the hell is Harriet?"

  An evil chuckle came across the line. "Oh, Professor Langly is quite well. For the moment, at least. Your concern is touching, I must say."

  "Let me talk to her!"

  "No, no, sorry, that's quite impossible. She is, ah, preoccupied with matters of our transit."

  Sawhill struggled to control himself. "Listen, Hadji, I'll pay you, I'll give you money, any amount you want, I'll raise it somehow—"

  "Money?!" he said with mock resentment. "What need have I for money? Listen to me, my friend. Do you know why I have called you?" He waited for a response, but Sawhill stood silent and tense at the other end of the call. "I have called to tell you that I have beaten you all! I have won!"

  "Hadji, you have to listen to reason—"

  "No, you listen. We shall go to the holy place and there I, or someone else—it doesn't really matter—will drink the soul of your lady friend. And I shall spit on her grave, do you hear me? And I shall wait a few decades, and then I shall spit on your grave." He laughed joyfully. "You shall die, you shall all die, and I shall live forever, millions of years, millions of years!" He was still laughing as he slammed down the phone.

  "Hadji!" Sawhill screamed. "Hadji! Hadji! HADJI!" He ripped the phone cord from the wall as he hurled the phone against the door of the office. "You BASTARD!" he shouted. "You miserable bastard!" He began to pound the table top with his fists, weeping hysterically. "You bastard!" he repeated as he sank weakly to his knees. "You miserable bastard!"

  "Tom!" Sam said sharply. "Was that Hadji? Did I hear you call him Hadji? Was that Ahmed Hadji?"

  "That animal!" Sawhill wept. "He was gloating! He was gloating!"

  "What did he say?" Roderick asked. "It may be important. It may give us a clue, something to follow. What did he say?"

  "He said he was . . ." Sawhill's body was trembling so violently that his knees gave way and he fell onto the floor. "He said—he was going to drink her soul . . ."

  Sam Goldhaber put his hands under Sawhill's arms and lifted him to his feet. "Listen, Tom, the Earl is right. Did he say anything, anything at all which might serve as a lead for us? Think!"

  Sawhill struggled to control himself, to stop his body from shaking. "He said something about a holy place—a holy place—"

  "Then it's Egypt," Sam said with grim satisfaction. "I was thinking that they could have gone anywhere in the world—Brazil, Burma, anywhere. But if there's a holy place, it must be in Egypt." He looked Sawhill in the eye. "We're going to Egypt."

  "Egypt's not a little country, Sam—"

  "It's a fifty-mile-wide strip of land running along either side of one river. I'm not saying it will be easy, but it narrows down our search. Look, Tom, if they're going to Egypt, they must be arranging it somehow through that institute or that company Hadji partly owns. We have to go there and start snooping around, seeing what we can turn up."

  "Shouldn't we get official assistance?" Roderick asked.

  "It would be great, but who would believe us?" Sam replied. "We're not talking about a normal kidnapping here. We're talking about the resurrected corpses of ancient pagan priests. The State Department would kick us out of their office!"

  "Your Lordship," Sawhill said slowly, "this is the second time you've said 'we.' Are you going to help us? I didn't think—"

  "I know, you assumed I'd bid you a cheery farewell and be off. But I feel responsible for this whole unpleasant business." He leaned forward and looked at the other two men earnestly. "You must try to understand, my friends, that I've never felt responsible for anything before in my life. Lord, I've never had to be responsible for anything! But I've been thinking quite a bit about the things my late uncle kept telling me over the years, the family honor and all that. It was my family that brought these creatures to England, and it was I who brought them here. I can't just walk away as if it were none of my concern."

  Sam and Sawhill were quiet for a few moments. Roderick seemed to blush slightly, as if embarrassed by his own words, and his blush deepened when Sawhill grasped his hand and began to shake it. "I've misjudged you, Your Lordship."

  "No you haven't, actually," he stammered. "And please, call me Roderick." He was uncomfortable with the sudden amiability, and he coughed, straightened his shoulders, and tried to be businesslike. "Well! What's the plan? How shall we begin?"

  "We begin by getting airplane tickets to Cairo," Sam said, reaching for the phone. Then, remembering that Sawhill had torn its wire out of the wall, he sat back in his chair. "We can go to your place, Tom, and make arrangements from there. Do you have a passport?"

  "Somewhere," Sawhill replied. "I don't know if it's still good. It may have expired."

  "Well, we'll check. Mine is still good, as is His Lordship's, obviously."

  "Roderick," the Earl said.

  "Yes, of course," Sam smiled. "I'm not certain, but I think we'll need to be inoculated. We may need visas in addition to the passports."<
br />
  "I have lots of credit cards," Roderick said helpfully.

  "No, Roderick, a visa is a special document you need to enter certain countries. But we will need a good deal of money—"

  "I shall provide it, of course," Roderick said grandly. "I shall wire my bank in London in the morning."

  "Great," Sam said. He picked up his glass, the only one with any bourbon left in it, and poured some of the liquor into the empty bottle and into Roderick's glass. He handed his glass to Sawhill and then raised the bottle into the air. "A toast, gentlemen, to the success of our journey." They each raised the bourbon to their lips and drank. Sam poured a few drops from the bottle onto the floor.

  "Why did you do that?" Roderick asked.

  "An ancient Greek custom," Sam explained. "Pouring a libation to the gods."

  His action might have been amusing under other circumstances. As it was, none of them laughed.

  III

  XEPHERAXEPHER

  I have divided the heavens, I have cleft the horizon. I have traversed the Earth and conquered the mighty spirit-souls. Mine enemy hath been given to me, and he shall not be delivered from me. I have come forth from the horizon against mine enemy, and he shall not escape my wrath.

  —The Egyptian Book of the Dead, XLIX

  CHAPTER 13

  Harriet Langly could not swim. Having lived her entire life in urban areas such as New York and Chicago before coming to the little rural town of Greenfield, swimming was one of many skills which she had never acquired. She could not sail, she could not water-ski, she could not ride a horse, she could not mark a trail, she could not swim. She had never seen any need to learn any of these things. But then she had never envisioned a time in her future when she would want to jump from the stern of a ship into the frigid waters of the North Sea.