Rising to light the lamp, I stumble over something on the floor. The light gleams wetly on the bare skull, the eviscerated torso that was Clive Fotheringham. I study it, reflecting.
Clive was neither my god nor my enemy. This fixes nothing.
I know what I must do.
At the door to the tomb there are a few native guards, who back away, muttering, at the sight of me. They know they must not interfere.
Anubis guards the door and speaks with Dingane's voice. No -- he does not repel me. He is there to welcome me. He is there to show me the way. The way to the Eye of Horus.
"Madness."
Maspero fingered the document nervously. The light of a single candle flickered across the paper and the writing that went from neat, straightforward lines to jagged, blotted scribbles. Crazy shadows jumped back and forth on the khaki canvas of the tent.
Montet wondered if the guards and night-strollers could see them from outside, black silhouettes sketched on canvas, bent over an innocuous-seeming paper. Despite the warmth of the night, he shivered. He wondered if he would ever forget the sight -- Clive Fotheringham's body with its skull gnawed clean, or that gibbering creature they found in the tomb that morning, chanting in an ancient language over the crumbled remains of its unholy feast.
"Mad, yes. The man is certainly mad. But his research . . . fantastic as it seems, Monsieur, his research is solid. I have compared his analysis of the earlier hieroglyphic forms, and he makes some bold assumptions, certainly. But they hold up. I cannot but say they warrant further examination."
"That's impossible."
"But sir! A text that predates the Coffin Texts -- perhaps the common source material for a multitude of Shamanistic cultures? That might have been carried south to the Kingdoms of South Africa, north to the pre-Druids, east to the sages of Tibet? How can we ignore that?"
Maspero raised his hand, cutting him off mid-stride.
"Already, Montet, the field of Egyptology is being polluted by soi-disant mystics and mediums -- those that claim to be reincarnated Goddesses and Queens, those that seek to exploit bad translations of scholarly texts and foist them on a gullible public. Do you comprehend the damage this story would do to legitimate scholarship? No -- the poor gentlemen went mad, never having recovered from his experiences in the war, and in a fit of madness killed a respected archeologist. It is best the world remembers it thus."
"And what of the cousin?"
"What cousin? An unknown, modern corpse in an ersatz tomb. Little to concern us there."
"I suppose we could send to Australia for confirmation of William Winchester's existence . . ."
"I think not," said Maspero. "And as for this document . . ."
Before the startled eyes of his aide he placed the papers in a shallow dish and lit one corner on fire.
". . . it is best, sometimes, that forbidden texts lost to history remain so."
Andrew Nicolle is an Australian expat, now living in the USA. He works as a software engineer by day, and writes fiction and apps by night. His short fiction has appeared in Spacesuits and Sixguns, Pseudopod, and A Field Guide to Surreal Botany. Follow his adventures online at andrewnicolle.com.
Samantha Henderson (www.samanthahenderson.com) lives in Covina, California by way of England, South Africa, Illinois and Oregon. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, and Weird Tales, and reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Science Fiction, Steampunk Revolutions and the Mammoth Book of Steampunk. She is the co-winner of the 2010 Rhysling Award for speculative poetry, and is the author of the Forgotten Realms novel Dawnbringer. Her poetry chapbook, The House of Forever, was recently released from Raven Electrick Ink: http://amzn.to/11b2AAF
Story illustration by Lee Copeland.
Return to the table of contents
Tracking the Black Book
by Douglas Wynne
When it came to grimoires, Eric reminded Peter of a jeweler digging through a bag of dirty rocks that had cost him dearly, examining each under his monocle, breath held in anticipation of an elusive refraction of the light combined with just the right weight in his hand. But some stones were simply out of reach, even with their authenticity untested, and Eric could usually let these go. Until he found the Necronomicon. That was different, and for the first time in their long friendship, Eric asked Peter for money.
The year was 2003 and the seller, a Mr. Qassim, claimed to have been a clerk at the Iraq National Library and Archives in Baghdad. In a series of emails, Qassim relayed the story of how he had discovered the book in a moldering stack while conspiring to sell rare manuscripts on the antiquities black market ahead of the American invasion. The UN was still wringing its hands over sanctions and inspections amid rumors of war, but in those days one didn’t need magic to divine the future, and Qassim had fled with his plunder to Cairo where he put out feelers on the Internet. Two weeks later, Eric broached the subject with his old conjuring partner.
“I know you wouldn’t ask if you didn’t have good reason to take it seriously, but we both know forgeries are a cottage industry. And five grand is... significant.” Peter bit his thumbnail and stared at the laptop Eric had placed on the coffee table in front of him.
“This is different,” Eric said. “You don’t know what it took for me to even find this.”
“And that might be coloring your judgment a little.”
Eric raised an eyebrow, “When has it ever?”
“You’ve had your guy translate parts of it?”
“I wouldn’t be asking you if I hadn’t.”
“So, apart from the seller’s story, what do you make of the contents?”
“The syntax of the conjurations is dead on. Those scans you’re looking at? There are a lot of them. I’ve barely slept this week going through them with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Are there any diagrams? Glyphs?”
“Yeah. Click on that. I’ve never seen anything like them. In fact, I’m starting to worry about some of them blooming in my dreams the next time I do sleep.”
Peter sat back, dragged his thumb and forefinger across his closed eyelids to the bridge of his nose and said, “Okay, how sick are we? I have the kid’s college fund to think about and I’m considering spending five k on a book that at worst is a forgery and at best will give us nightmares.”
“C’mon, Pete, you know nightmares aren’t the worst it can do,” Eric said with a tone that suggested he wanted Peter to challenge the idea.
Peter sighed. They had spent more hours on the nature of the fabled Necronomicon over the span of their friendship than on any other topic. Considering how elusive it was, there was an absurd proliferation of rumor in occult circles about the hazards of even possessing the book. The original Arabic text was nothing but a wisp of smoke drifting through the footnotes of history. And yet, whenever the title was mentioned to a practitioner, it provoked dire warnings that the book was cursed.
Peter slouched into the couch and shot a glance at his watch. Lily was at the supermarket with Robbie, but they would be home soon. “Are you referring to the curse, or to actually using it to conjure?”
“The curse is probably bullshit. I mean nobody can ever back that up since nobody credible has ever seen an original.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I’d be more concerned about what we might encounter if we use it.”
“Okay. Now we come to it. Just what do you have in mind, anyway? Because what we’re looking at here is basically an artifact that belongs in a museum. It’s worth a hell of a lot more than the asking price, if it’s legit―and why is that, anyway? But all that aside, you’re thinking of vibrating the incantations and spilling candle wax on it, aren’t you? You want to work some mojo with it, I can see it in your impish grin, you crazy little fuck. So tell me, to what end?”
Eric leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. “To find out first hand if it works. Same as ever.”
“But this is
on a different scale. If it does work, what then?”
Eric stared at a blank spot on the wall for a moment, then met Peter’s eyes and said, “Then we’ll know. Unequivocally. We will have answered the central question of our friendship: Is this shit for real?”
“I wonder at what cost.” Peter replied.
“We’re not dabblers, Pete. We’ve been doing this a long time. We’ll be okay.”
Peter took a swig of iced tea from a can and shuffled the sheaf of email printouts against the coffee table. Eric was looking at him for a verdict.
“Why so cheap, if it’s real? Not like Lily won’t kill me if she finds out, but considering what it appears to be…”
“He’s scared. I think it’s that simple. Let me show you his last email.”
Eric rifled through the papers, and withdrew a page that was warped from frequent sweaty handling.
Dear Mr. Marley,
I must have your decision presently. This object has become a burden to me and I need to be rid of it. Perhaps I risk frightening you away, but it seems that someone of your proclivities may be assured of the authenticity by what I will tell you.
Yesterday I carried the book with me when I went to meet with a scholar at the Boulak museum. On the way there, I was attacked by dogs. And in my hotel room at night, insects have gathered around the box I keep it in, beetles and even a scorpion. The book seems to hum in their language, and they want to be near it. There have also been accidents when I walk the streets, and I fear that soon Allah will cease to protect me.
Our haggling is over. You may have it for the $5000 US dollars. And do not think that I will give you a cursed book for free. I will burn it first. You must tell me within 24 hours if we have a deal, or it will burn. You can wire the money Western Union. Forgive my rude haste.
Sincerely,
Mr. Qassim
Peter set the page down and shook his head.
“I think he’ll do it,” Eric said, “I think he’ll burn it.”
For a moment neither of them spoke. A gentle breeze lifted the yellow curtains in the living room of Peter’s house on Hubble Street, and the scent of lavender drifted in from Lily’s flowerbox. Before the curtains settled again, sparkling silver light could be seen playing on the surface of the Merrimack River through the trees. It was a beautiful day after all of the spring rain they had endured, such an incongruous day to be discussing what might stir in the shadows at the bottom of the well of eternity. Peter laid his fingertips on the printout as if it were a Bible he was about to take an oath on, and said, “Even considering Qassim’s experiences, you don’t think it’s cursed?”
“He’s a devout Muslim. It’s spooking him out.”
“Okay. I have some stocks Lily doesn’t know much about. They’ve done all right and it’s an account she won’t be looking at. If we find a way to make money on this with… I dunno, a limited edition English translation or something, then maybe we’ll tell her the whole story. Maybe. For now, this looks like a once in a lifetime chance. I’m in. We need to be careful, though.”
“We will be. We’ll take every precaution.”
“Alright.” Peter sighed. “So now that you’ve finally found it, how do you feel?”
“Nervous as hell.”
“Good.”
On Monday morning Peter cashed out the stocks, and Eric had completed the wire transfer by noon. “Would have been a lot easier if the Mad Arab took Paypal,” Peter joked. At home that night he checked his email before going to read bedtime stories to Robbie, and found a FedEx tracking number in his inbox.
Ship date: June 9, 2003
Estimated delivery: June 11, 2003
Destination: Haverhill, MA
Status: Package data transmitted to FedEx
DETAIL
Activity: Package data transmitted
Location: Heliopolis, EG
The package was estimated to arrive on Wednesday, just two days hence. That seemed fast, but it was airplanes pretty much all the way. He closed the laptop lid and announced that it was story time.
Sophie, their aging German shepherd, woke him in the night to go out. While he awaited her return, he ambled over to the little roll-top desk where he paid the bills, blinking sleep from his eyes. He flipped the laptop open and hit refresh on the web page he’d left up. The status was now: In transit. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or threatened.
In the morning, while trying to feed Robbie some oatmeal without getting it on his shirt, he reached for the laptop again. Setting it down inside the Flying Oatmeal Zone was not a chance he would ordinarily take, and of course he could check the tracking from his office computer as soon as he got there, but he didn’t want to wait that long. The status now said: Redirected. Strange. He had tracked his share of packages, but didn’t recall ever seeing that particular status.
“What’s so urgent?” Lily asked from the hallway where she stood wrapped in a towel, brushing tangles out of her hair, fresh from the shower.
“Nothing. Just checking on some stocks.”
In the car, he turned on the radio. With the war in its opening phase he seldom strayed from NPR these days. As he backed the Camry out of the driveway, a segment about some baseball player testing positive for performance enhancing drugs was wrapping up. This was followed by a summary of top stories delivered by a female reporter with a British accent. One item caught his attention.
“A Federal Express cargo plane made an emergency landing in Cypress today. A spokesman for the corporation praised the pilot’s skill under duress, but declined to identify the source of the problem with the Boeing 727. No one aboard was injured.”
A horn blared and Peter slammed on his breaks. A car flashed by in his mirrors as coffee sloshed out of the hole in his travel cup. Jesus. He’d almost backed right into it. He shut off the radio with an irritated stab at the button, and eased the car out onto the road.
He was distracted all day, thinking of insects crawling out of the walls in a Cairo hotel room, of dogs chasing Mr. Qassim down trash strewn alleys, of a pilot diving his plane to avoid a flock of leather-winged, potbellied predators pouring forth from a fissure in the clouds like maggots erupting from the torn flesh of a gas-bloated corpse on the shore of some nameless ocean.
Stop it. He had to stop this train of thought. It was just an old book, the downed plane, just a coincidence. The dread tome had slept on the dusty shelf of a library in Baghdad for how many years?
And then something stirred and war came to Baghdad. And what will come to you when you have the cursed thing?
Just stop it.
The tracking results didn’t change all day. He drove home in a heavy rain, then surfaced from his fugue by force of will at the dinner table. Before going to bed, he lifted the laptop lid one last time. The machine whirred to life, clicking and breathing. The tracking page was already up; it was always up now, wherever he had a computer. He clicked and waited.
The page now showed an arrival scan for Paris. They were a mightily efficient carrier, he had to admit that, even with a worm of dread coiling in his stomach. Redirected. He went to bed, but sleep was slow to claim him.
Morning brought heavier rain. Pools had formed in the backyard where some of Robbie’s toys now floated, and a dirty towel had taken up residence on the sliding door handle in the kitchen for wiping the mud off Sophie.
In the car he almost put on a CD to keep from brooding, but habit won out, and he left the news on. And then it came, as he knew it would, a little story, glossed over in a few seconds. A dreadful story. Charles DeGaulle airport in Paris was mired in delays after a partial runway collapse due to a ruptured water main.
Rain lashed the windshield in white sheets that his wipers couldn’t clear on their fastest setting. He turned off the radio and craned his neck toward the glass, as if that would help him to better see the road ahead.
He called Eric on his lunch break.
“Have you been following the tracking number?” He aske
d without a hello.
Eric laughed, “Of course. You too, huh? I still can’t believe it’s actually going to be in our hands tomorrow.”
“I’m starting to worry about that.”
“Relax.”
“Eric, listen to me. I think Qassim was right. I think the book is cursed.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. You don’t follow the news. I do. There have been accidents that I would bet anything are related to the package as it moves.”
“I don’t see how you could be sure of that.”
“It’s not hard to see a pattern when you compare the tracking data to the stories. Trust me.”
“Pete, trust me. You’re having prom night jitters, that’s all. You’re out of practice, and now we’ve found the real thing. You’re nervous; it’s understandable.”
“You’re not hearing me!” Peter barked and immediately sensed the conversational mute button that had been engaged among his coworkers in the cubicles surrounding his own. He continued in a hushed tone, “There will be no experiments with this thing. It’s not safe. We made a mistake Eric, but now it’s coming. It’s coming to my house where my child is. We need to divert the package. We have to do a Return to Sender or something.”
“How much coffee have you had this morning?”
“I’m not paranoid.”
“Yeah. That’s what you said after nine-eleven when you were on the computer all the time. And there’s no getting your money back from this guy. You know that, right?”
“I don’t care about the money.”
“Has anyone been hurt or killed by any of these accidents you’re talking about?”
“I… I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Then chill out. Right now the book is loose, it isn’t bound by any of the defensive wards I’m going to put on it as soon as it gets here. Just let me take care of it. It’ll be okay.”
Lovecraft Ezine Mega-Issue 3 Rev3 Page 19
