A Haunting of Horrors, Volume 2: A Twenty-Book eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Brian Hodge

  “Words,” she breathed softly. “Words were your life. Words and life. Bound. You brought life to the words — words to the life and they took it. All gone. Took it away and burned.”

  Cyrus shook his head and glanced to the side. The light of the lantern flickered. He was momentarily trapped in the vision of flames. Within those flames hieroglyphs danced and screamed. Sound that should have been silence — sound in a moment that was all silence — surfaced, and he shook his head. Enough.

  Rising carefully, he stepped back and drew the plastic shield down over the surface of the table. He worked on the scroll directly, but when he was not working, it was sealed from the environment by a clear acrylic cover. He knew he should keep the shield in place at all times. That was the rule, but the feel of the parchment helped his concentration. It felt — right. When it was late enough that the others would not see, he always drew aside the protective cover.

  The light flickered, and he stepped away from the table, turning to grab the nearest lantern. He moved about the tent, dousing the rest quickly. Outside, wind whispered across the dunes. Sand danced and shifted. Insects whirred. At night, the desert lived.

  Cyrus closed his eyes and leaned against the table to catch his breath. The old woman’s words flickered through his mind and he shook his head, trying to dislodge them. Why now, he wondered? Why now, after all these years, that voice? The words continued to buzz in his ears like flies.

  Words.

  He staggered away from the table and lurched through the flap of the tent into the darkness beyond. Cyrus’ own quarters were down several rows of nondescript tents, just past the mess tent. No one stirred at that late hour. No one but Cyrus, who was caught up in the histories and mysteries of years so long fallen to dust that it could take days just to bring a single sentence to light. The others cared, each in his or her own way, but they didn’t feel it the way Cyrus felt it. They didn’t share his dreams — or his nightmares.

  Something moved in the shadows to his left and Cyrus flinched, staggering into the wall of a tent three away from his own. Cursing, he righted himself and extricated his foot from the cables and stakes. He stopped and waited, but no one had noticed.

  Again the motion to his left. Metal banged on metal, the tone echoing. Cyrus grew very still. His breath slid slowly in and out of his lungs, and he fought to slow it further. Who else was awake? What were they doing?

  Nothing was clear, no words, but the whispered rasp of low toned voices carried on the breeze. They came from the direction of the ruins. Lovers, slipping off into the dunes at night? Cyrus’ mind sifted quickly through those who shared his days and evenings. There were couples, but it was difficult to imagine any of them carrying on so late, or so openly. In the world of academics and science, appearances were often the key to success. It wasn’t what you knew, but how it was presented, to whom, and how it was received that could make the difference.

  Who else, though? The sound repeated — and again. The echoes were loud enough that Cyrus began to wonder why no one else was up to investigate. The voices, while not loud, were constant — crying out one to another in the darkness. The sound of footsteps joined that of metal on metal, and Cyrus pressed himself against the canvas of one of the tents, staring off through the shadows.

  He saw nothing. There was a slight darkening of the skyline where the pyramid rose above the sand. Beyond that, not even the stars shone in the sky. No moon illuminated the sky. A complete void. Cyrus’ heartbeat slammed in his chest. His breath grew short, and his eyes closed tight against the nothingness that confronted him. There was nothing there. Nothing could be there. Nothing.

  Flames licked at walls of wood, flickering upward and crackling. The snap of sparks reverberated through his mind. Cyrus turned and pressed between the last two tents, found the flap to his own and stumbled through. He brought two fingers to his cheek.

  His skin was hot — damp from sweat. Too hot for just the heat of the desert at night. Now he felt the chill as the damp sweat met the cooler air of his tent, and he shivered. The fan in the corner spun in a lazy arc and turned his skin clammy.

  Cyrus lit the lantern beside his cot and turned up the wick. Long shadows danced along the canvas walls, but they were all born of the internal workings of his life — the fly strips whirling and reflecting light. The fan, endlessly panning the tent’s interior. Each was a familiar shadow. They didn’t join with the sounds beyond his tent — beyond the camp.

  They were a part of Cyrus’ world.

  Lying back on the firm cot, his pillow tucked beneath his neck, he closed his eyes and drifted. Nothing felt right, but fatigue would not be denied. His temples ached. His eyes burned from too many hours spent scrutinizing words that were written for people so long dead he could be treading on their bones in the dust beneath his feet, and never know it. A dull throb numbed the back of his head.

  The voices in the distance grew clearer as he drifted. He could make out a word here, another there. For some reason he couldn’t follow the conversation. Something was a little off, the echo of the sound, or maybe they were just too distant.

  Cyrus blinked sleepily. The words focused more clearly. Something about fire. Orders cried out into the darkness. Burning. He heard what sounded like flames lapping at wooden walls. His memories shifted and re-arranged. He saw the apartment building down the street from where he’d grown up, charring steadily, and the whitewashed walls blackening as orange and yellow flames licked their way up the side. Destroying. Canvas tents flapping in the wind. Nothing but canvas.

  The words faded. Softened.

  Cyrus dreamed.

  The scrolls were stacked haphazardly — forming a small mountain of papyrus and vellum that stretched toward the sky, tube shaped fingers of words wound upon words. Cyrus stared upward from where they’d bound him, kneeling in the sand. His heartbeat was a dull, thudding drone.

  Blood trickled down his forehead, gift of the heavy butt of a Roman sword. The sand was losing the heat of the day, and the wind held a chill driven from the heart of despair. Voices called out all around him. Torches flickered, dim echoes of the deeper flames from the city. So much destruction. So much waste.

  The words would have preserved it, he knew. The words would have painted the city in her glory, the history and the inventories, the finances and the great loves. All in the words. All in a mangled heap circled in stones and reduced to flapping bits of tinder, awaiting the torch.

  Cyrus could see the Queen’s eyes, filled with reproach. That was the last expression he’d seen on her beautiful face, and as he remembered, tears trickled from the corners of his eyes to etch lines in the grime coating his face. He could not reach up to brush them away, so they tortured him as he remembered. The words had been his to protect. His to preserve. Hers for eternity. She was Queen, but she was Isis Walking, as well, and he had failed her. He had failed them all.

  All around him, booted feet clattered. The sound of more boxes and bundles being dragged from the libraries and from the temples echoed and twined with the cries of warriors, the sobs of young women and boys, the snorting of impatient animals left too long without care — and the moaning wails of death. Cyrus lowered his eyes from the pyre and softly mumbled prayers to Anubis - prayers of death - if not for those destroying his world, then for himself. Swiftly

  Footsteps grew nearer and suddenly Cyrus was sent sprawling as a huge hand slapped flat to the back of his head. Roaring laughter punctuated the pain, and with no hands to break the fall, Cyrus hit the sand so swiftly he barely had time to turn his head. His cheek burned where the grit bit deep.

  “You are the scribe.” It was not a question. The voice behind the words dripped contempt.

  Cyrus said nothing. He lay in the sand, eyes closed, trying not to think of the pain in his cheek, or the flames drawing nearer to the pyre. Trying not to think of the Queen and her deep, disappointed eyes.

  A boot crashed into his ribs. The words were repeated in Greek, and this time the
inflection made them a question. Unable even to breathe, Cyrus nodded. His head wore a rut in the sand, and the pain nearly blacked out the world. Salt blinded him, and he could not brush it away, or the sand. His lips were crusted with it, thick with blood.

  A huge, powerful hand gripped him by his hair and lifted. Cyrus struggled weakly, but there was no way to get purchase with his wrists bound, and he had no strength to match his tormentor. His gaze was turned inexorably up, following the rising mountain of paper. Wind whipped the loose sheets of papyrus about in crazy whirling forms that, through the haze of sweat and pain, looked almost like ghosts.

  Cyrus closed his eyes, but moments later a fist slammed into the side of his head, and he felt the flesh of his ear expanding — ballooning out to impossible dimensions. His head throbbed hotly and he gagged, held from the ground only by the fist tight in his hair.

  “You will watch.” That voice was close in his ear, the breath hot and tepid — stinking of rotted meat and mead. The stench of the man’s sweat was horrifying, and the sting at the roots of Cyrus’ hair was unbearable. He was shamed by his weakness, but he did not close his eyes again.

  Moments later, a short, swarthy Roman swaggered from the shadows, torch held high, and moved to the pyre. The scrolls seemed to stretch forever. Cyrus could not see the top of the mountain — could not bear to see it. Though his tongue was thick as a sausage and his throat parched to the point of cutting off his breath, he watched, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes and running down through the blood-soaked sand caked on his cheeks.

  The torch dipped — hesitated. A wide, half-toothed grin slipped over the soldier’s face, and he turned, staring straight into Cyrus’ eyes. The torch dropped and the flames leapt to the sky like birds startled from the rushes. The darkness parted and a wave of heat and light seared Cyrus’s skin — blinded him

  “No,” he tried to whisper but the sound was so much sand drifting across the dry and rocky ground. “No.”

  Cyrus woke. The flapping of canvas was louder. A wind had risen from the desert, and sand hissed between the tents. The stakes holding them tightly in place strained and Cyrus could almost feel the tension on the ropes. He was bathed in sweat. His scalp tingled with the memory of another’s pain, and his eyes would not adjust to the darkness immediately. Strobed images of licking flames and crooked, yellowed teeth filled his mind.

  Slowly, he released his grip on the sheets. He hadn’t noticed, at first, that he was clutching his hands tightly at his sides, as though anchoring himself in place. As though he might be carried away. What was that sound?

  The voices were loud and insistent, and he heard the distinct ring of metal on metal, a grating sound that could only come from equipment being moved — and roughly. Or …

  The vision of short, broad swords glinting in the searing brilliance of firelight too close — too hot — shifted across his vision. The scuff of sandals on sand. Stones falling.

  He shook his head, sat up, and slid his legs off the side of his cot.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. He could feel the exhaustion that must show in his eyes, but there was no way to sleep. His sheets felt like hot sand.

  He rose quickly and moved back to the flap of his tent. The lantern hung on a hook at one side of the door, but he ignored it. The moon would be enough to see by, and he only wanted a glance — a single stabilizing sight of some idiot dragging a crate of equipment between the tents in the middle of the night, to calm his nerves. Whoever it was had questions to answer, that much was certain. Cyrus would see to it. Sleep was a valuable commodity to the obsessed, and he couldn’t afford any lost without good cause.

  He couldn’t afford the dreams.

  The sand danced its lonely dance, whipping into the tents to either side of the narrow path between. There was no one. There was nothing to see. In the not-so-distance the sounds echoed. Cyrus glanced in the direction of the city, ancient and modern, not even a soft glow of light at this hour, though not so distant.

  Alexandria. He stared into the distance, as if he could melt the miles with his mind and draw her closer. The city had been a Mecca of learning, a haven for words in a world filled with the imminence of action.

  So long ago.

  Cleopatra had walked there. Proud queen, one of a hundred by that same name, walking the footsteps of a Goddess and living the life of an aristocratic nightmare world where intelligence fell to brute strength. A world where the learning of Greece and the dreams of even Alexander had fallen to dust. Or been burned.

  The wind picked up suddenly, and sand wisped around his feet. The sound was the voice of asps. Slithering. Hissing against the tent. Cyrus shuddered involuntarily and took half a step back toward his tent. He heard a shout: a wild, wailing cry of pain. He heard footsteps, some rushing as if propelled by madness, some slower, methodical and steady. He heard only the sand, felt it sliding over his ankles and slipping up under the cuffs of his pants. He heard the clatter of steel on steel, deep guttural voices that made no sense, words that whirled in his mind, echoed at the edge of consciousness — then cleared.

  Roman. He was hearing voices crying out in Latin so archaic, so off kilter from any he’d spoken or heard spoken, in school or on the site, that it jarred his senses loose from their moorings. The pronunciations and inflections were unfamiliar. Wrong. No … he staggered back toward his tent again, tripping over his own feet and falling heavily toward the sand. Not wrong. Jesus, not wrong at all.

  Cyrus didn’t break his fall. The words had startled something out of him, something deep and resonant, and he was unable to concentrate on anything but the sound. The pure, “correct” sound. Latin. The absolute. The reality. Not an exercise in pronunciation and history being bandied about by foppish professors, but gut-true speech.

  The hard smack of his head on the floor of the tent sent stars spinning through the words, confusing them again. Darkness coalesced before his eyes, blocking the dim light of the stars, then dropped over his mind and eyes like a shroud. Cyrus passed into that darkness, and he dreamed.

  The heat was tremendous. Cyrus knew he was too close to the fire, but he didn’t care. His eyes were closed again. The soldiers seemed to have temporarily lost interest in their captive as the fire leaped to the sky, dancing up the pyre of scrolls and parchment like a band of howling demons. It was so quick to give in, that pile of words. So many lives and loves, hours and dreams had gone into the compiling and transcribing that it was beyond simple comprehension, except in a moment like this. Except when it was all a single spark, blazing toward ash. Except when the words condensed to a single roar and spewed to the heavens, dispersed with no more thought or reason than could be found in the swirling of the sand.

  As if snapping free of a dream, one of the soldiers turned, noted Cyrus’ closed eyelids, and cuffed him hard on the side of the head.

  “Open your eyes scribe. Watch. You will see, and you will remember.”

  Cyrus would remember. He would see, even when his eyes were closed. He would know the sound of a thousand thousand words screaming at once until the thread that was his own in the tapestry of fate wound to its end and faded into oblivion. His eyes watered, and then poured salty tears. The tears formed a rainbowesque halo around the soaring flames, and the pain at the roots of his hair kept his nerves taut and screaming in time with the crackle and pop from the fire.

  Cyrus’ hands scraped roughly across the sand, tearing at his flesh and imbedding the grit in the new cuts. His head pounded, and his eyes streamed with the tears from his dream. Dream? How could he have been dreaming? A vision?

  Cyrus shook his head, regretted the action, and then shook it again anyway. He had to get control. The moon was bright overhead, and the wind tossed sand into his face with every gust, threatening to blind him.

  The tears dried on his cheeks, leaving them cold and clammy. His armpits were clammy, as well, and his thighs. Sweat coated him in a thin veil of ice.

  Cyrus rose, aware that he flinched, expect
ing somehow the tight grip of strong fingers in his hair. Nobody else moved in the camp. Nobody was ever moving in the camp at that hour, but Cyrus glanced first one way, then the other, shivering. He rose to a kneeling position and wrapped his arms across his chest.

  “Christ,” he whispered.

  He glanced up, and over the line of tents directly ahead, he saw a bright, flickering glow. Too bright to be a lantern, too distant. Alexandria was the other direction, so it could not be the city. Had the people of the city gone up in arms against their digging? Were there hundreds of torch bearing Egyptians descending on the camp?

  Cyrus rose. He tried to paint that picture in his mind, bringing up memories of Frankenstein movies and angry villagers. He couldn’t make the leap. His mind echoed with the sounds of swords sliding in and out of scabbards, the roar of flames, and the hoarse Latin words grated in his ear.

  Stumbling to his feet, Cyrus turned and moved through the tents. He had to see. He had to know where the light was coming from, had to know who and what was making those sounds. His throat was so dry he could scarcely breathe. His eyes were filled with salt water and grit, but he squinted and continued on, not bothering to wipe them clean.

  He kept his gaze pointed straight ahead, into the desert, but he couldn’t quite clear his sight. Images itched at his thoughts, begging for attention. The scrolls. Behind him, held safe from wind and rain, oxygen and groping fingers beneath their protective covering. So many hours — too many hours — brow drenched in sweat and fingers brushing that parchment. As if the words and symbols could be fathomed by touch, ancient Braille reaching out to him across the centuries. Braille was an apt description — he felt blind.

  After all their efforts, uncovering the ruins, painstakingly sifting through sand and grit, stone chambers and pots, the scrolls were all they had. The answers they needed to complete their work were tangled in the scrawled symbols, enigmatic and dense. They had found a huge, underground vault of a ruin. They had found evidence of civilization from the era of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, and Hollywood’s Caesar, but they had found no reason — not even a scrap of a reason, as a matter of fact — for the place’s existence.