Eternal Unrest: A Novel of Mummy Terror

by Dixon, Lorne; Cato, Nick

  The guard tapped the board. “Right, there you are. I’ll need your papers, of course. You’re late. We were expecting you yesterday. Will the other trucks be along shortly?”

  Brigham bit his bottom lip.

  “No.” She rolled the documentation into a tube and slid it through the fence. “There was an attack right outside the museum. Both trucks were destroyed, along with, I imagine, most of the antiquities inside them. We barely got away. And … there were … casualties.”

  The guard nodded. “Everywhere, Miss. We have casualties everywhere. I had two brothers and a father before all this began. Got none of them now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He straightened out the paperwork and inspected it. “Hate to be so frank with you, but sorry isn’t an acceptable apology to someone in my shoes. The Germans’ll need to pay for all this madness with their blood before it’s all done.”

  The guard tore off the final sheet and added it to his clipboard. As he handed back the rest, his eyes shot to Dara. “I don’t see anything here about a child.”

  “Is there a problem?” Mason asked and locked eyes with the guard. His coat opened like curtains, showcasing his muscular chest, as well as his torn and bloodstained shirt.

  The guard’s eyes dropped. “No, no problem.”

  The guard unlocked the gate, slid it open, and motioned them inside. “I’ll send for someone to drive the truck up to the pavilion. Sorry, but regulations. The pier’s under the authority of the Royal Navy. Please step off to the left, onto the smaller track. Yes, that’ll do fine. But do watch your step. Things’ve been a madhouse here and sometimes the regular maintenance gets put off.”

  They walked. The pavilion grew larger as they approached it. From the roadway it might have looked huge, but up close, it was colossal. “Yes. I see your faces. It may look like the largest hangar bay you’ve ever laid eyes on, but the truth is that there’s quite a bit more inside: welding garages, supply bays, administrative offices—actually, you’d be shocked by how much of it is government office space.”

  Priscilla winked at Brigham. “Do they serve tea?”

  The guard, misunderstanding, said, “I’m sure I can find you a cup once we’re inside. There’ll be the rolls to fill out, anyway, so there’ll be time.”

  She waved the thought away. “Don’t worry about it. We’re already a day late. How long will it take to load the ship?”

  “Not long, maybe a couple of hours depending how many hands I can scrounge up to pitch in from the machine shop. It’ll probably take that long to get the paperwork out of our sight.” He herded them through a large, rounded doorway and through a work garage. All around them, welders used blowtorches and grinders to reshape metal. Orange sparks danced at their feet before exhausting themselves on the concrete. “Up that metal staircase over there. The offices are in the lofts above. Careful with the little girl.”

  The iron staircase chattered and groaned as they climbed. Brigham guided Dara from behind, one hand always ready to steady her. Glancing down, Priscilla realized that the offices were two stories higher than the garage floor. The workers below looked no larger than dolls.

  Stepping through the office doors, she was surprised to find a lush carpet underfoot. The plush room could have easily put Maurice Teasdale’s museum quarters to shame: a long mahogany desk, six leather-upholstered chairs, a beautiful antique globe accented with ivory polar caps.

  The guard motioned for them to sit.

  Dara climbed face-first up into one of the tall chairs, then spun around so she could sit properly. The guard nodded toward a door on the far end of the office. “I’m sure the director will be right with you.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Be patient with him. He’s lost both legs and it takes a little more time for him to get around.”

  The guard nodded to them and dropped back through the doorway. As the door closed, Mason’s face lengthened and paled. From the seat next to Priscilla, he leaned over and whispered, “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

  “Didn’t tell me?” she asked, also whispering.

  “This morning when we discussed … last night … It’s probably nothing, but I didn’t want to spook you worse than you already were.”

  She told him, “Tell me now.”

  “When I jumped into the truck, he kicked at me, do you remember? Pushed me up against the dashboard. I couldn’t free myself. He was too strong.” Mason’s eyes flashed over toward Brigham, as if to make sure the other man wasn’t listening. Concerned with Dara, he wasn’t. “Thing is, and I can’t explain it, is that I felt two feet, one restraining each of my shoulders.”

  She thought of the crippled old man balancing on his crutch when they’d first met him, so weak, his balance so fragile. Whatever had gotten inside him had brought immense power with it.

  The far door opened and the director rolled in. The man strapped into the wheelchair was younger than she expected—probably two decade younger. She wondered if he’d been promoted because of his injuries. The guard hadn’t properly warned them of the extent of his body that was missing. She might have expected two mid-thigh stumps, but not this. Both of his hips were gone, as was his pelvis, his body ending with his abdomen.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Director Kelvins,” he said, wiggling in his chair, straightening up. He cocked one thumb back toward the door he’d just come through. “That’s the radio room. We spend a lot of time tracking reports of German U-boat activity. I have a deck of fourteen sailors in there transcribing transmissions. My job, more often than not, is to decide which reports are to be sent up the ladder and which should be dropped down the snakes.”

  “How do you know which is which?” Brigham asked.

  Director Kelvins shrugged. “You get a head for it and trust your instincts. One more thing, too, maybe the most important: never read the newspapers. Start reading about the sailors who died because you tossed out a rambling broadcast you thought was gibberish and you won’t be able to do this job. Or sleep.”

  Rolling himself up to his desk, he sorted through a stack of papers. “In this position, yesterday can only haunt you. You can’t read about the lives you saved because there are no reports of things that didn’t happen. The future is empty and safe. It’s the past that will destroy you if you pay it too much heed. Here—here you are.”

  Kelvins slid a short stack of clipped papers across the desk to Priscilla. “Fill it out, initial the top right corner of each page, and sign and date the last.”

  “We met a soldier last night,” Mason said, staring at the documents. “He said that the government wasn’t even bothering with death certificates with the war on.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’re not,” Kelvins said with a smile. “‘Course, you’re not shipping people to America. They actually care about your cargo and they intend to collect it the moment we win this war.”

  Priscilla started filling out the forms.

  Chapter 8

  At the edge of the platform, chest against the railing, her back to the pavilion, Priscilla stared down the length of the freighter. The vessel’s name, in large white block letters, scrolled across its side: ss limpkin. A large American flag was painted below this, simple and blocky, the artistry of dockworkers. So far, German submarines had been careful not to target US boats in anticipation that a sunken American boat might draw the States into the war.

  Mason came up behind her, snaked his arms around her waist, and rested his head on her shoulder, their cheeks almost touching. “Brigham found a proper first aid kit. No doctor, of course, but he’s made a splint for the girl’s arm. One of the welders—big burly guy with gray wire for a beard—he has a pocket full of sweet mints and he’s given them to her. Besides the sling, you might not know anything was wrong with her.”

  “That’s good,” she said, and nothing more. She knew the girl’s pain would return once the candy was gone, whether or not they found painkillers. At some point, Dara would have to face her
aunt and uncle’s deaths. At that point, the pain of a fractured arm wouldn’t compare.

  A dockworker backed the museum’s truck up to a loading platform. Before the brake lights dimmed, other workers had thrown open the deck cargo doors and begun emptying the bed. First out were a series of small crates with three–digit inventory numbers stenciled on their sides. After the loss of the other two trucks, she knew, there was no need for the numbers to go so high; there were only fifty-three crates in the truck. And after so rough a journey, some of the contents might well have been damaged. She imagined a Gojoseon-era illustrated plate as it might have rested in one of the crates, a fresh crack tunneling through its center, with smaller fissures spiraling out, the faded art now broken into a jigsaw puzzle’s face.

  It would be her responsibility to sort through the artifacts once they were aboard and en route, make detailed notes of any damage, and prepare an undated inventory log. She saw herself working long hours in the ship’s hold with a pad of paper and a pen, sorting through the remains of the British Museum’s prized exhibits. It was exactly the sort of work she despised and would have passed along to a subordinate at the Smithsonian, but now she looked forward to it because it would mean they had set sail and left England—and the madness of the last day—behind.

  Once resting a bed of pallets on the loading platform, a second team of workers carried the crates up a gangplank onto the Limpkin’s deck. There, a third team took the parcels, moved them onto a rope elevator, and lowered them into the hold. Under deck, more men would arrange the crates by size and inventory number. Priscilla counted two dozen men participating in the loading operation.

  “Ship’s got a loading door on its side, but they can’t use it here. Dock’s too high,” Mason said, pointing. “And they can’t use the cranes, ’cause the ship’s too small, too close.”

  “That’s small?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I guess the boys on the dock are used to loading vessels four times the size for the war effort.”

  The next three crates to emerge from the truck were longer than the others and marked egypt exhibit. She felt her stomach muscles tighten.

  “What do you suppose is in them?” Mason asked.

  She waited a moment before answering, unsure how her voice would sound with her body going rigid. “Teasdale’s set of prize relics. Curators always have a soft spot for mummies. They draw in customers that otherwise wouldn’t buy a ticket. There’s just something about dead bodies that draws a crowd. I spent a good chunk of yesterday hearing him gush over these three in particular. They shouldn’t exist. The embalming and mummification process were complex and expensive. Only pharaohs and the wealthiest could afford it. But these three, from all appearances, were not rich.”

  “What were they, then?” he asked. “Lucky?”

  She shook her head. “No. They’re dressed in the ceremonial garb that’s consistent with priests. But their bodies were covered in scar tissue and old wounds.”

  “Priests had a tougher road back then?”

  Her lips curved into a grim little smile. “Up until very recently, I would have said that all of ancient Egypt had a rougher road than we do. But I don’t believe that anymore, not with bombs falling and planes crashing and—”

  A warbling yell cut off her words. One of the long, coffin-shaped crates had slipped out of a dockworker’s hands. The three other workers struggled to keep it from falling, but the shift in weight was too great. The crate hit the loading platform, landing on its edge and crushing one of the worker’s hands. Screaming, he pulled away, leaving a pair of gloves and eight fingers trapped underneath the crate as it settled. He raised both arms and stared with bulging eyes at his destroyed hands. Only his thumbs remained.

  Priscilla turned away and swallowed hard. Her face flushed and her eyes began to water. Mason’s arms tightened around her, holding her up as her knees wobbled. “It’s okay. Just an accident. Happens all the time on these sorts of jobs. Just a horrible accident.”

  No, she wanted to tell him, none of this is an accident, or a delusion brought on by a concussion, or a trick of the light, or slight of hand. Something evil was directing the events. It had spoken to her, first in a mysterious, alien tongue, and then in her father’s voice. It had reached into her head and stole her language and her memories … and who knew what else. Why did he refuse to see it?

  She forced herself to turn back and watch the scene on the dock. Hiding her eyes was too much like what she accused Mason of doing, looking in the opposite direction and whistling to block out any proof that might sneak in through his eyes or ears. The dockworkers crowded around the wounded man. He was staggering, falling and catching himself, until his friends caught hold of his jacket and held him up. As blood spit out of the eight stumps on his hands, spattering the loading platform and the crate, one dockworker gripped his arms and brought them together while another tied a sloppy tourniquet around his wrists. The worker’s screams turned into sobbing.

  Maybe it was a curse, she thought as she watched the men shepherd him toward the pavilion. An old Egyptian curse like in the movies. It was preposterous, of course, just as silly as believing in faerie photography or gnome gardening, but it made more sense to her than visions brought on by a knock on the head. Real people were dead—Owney, Tamir, Keena—that was no delusion.

  As soon as the wounded worker was inside the pavilion, the others rushed back to the truck and continued to unload. The gangplank team lifted the bloody crate off the platform and carried it aboard. Priscilla watched them, transfixed, expecting each footfall to become a stumble and the horrible accident to replay itself. When it didn’t, another thought occurred to her the moment they set the crate on the elevator’s landing: it has the boat in its grip now, just as it had taken control of the truck and stranded them in Whitechapel; just as it had possessed Tamir and murdered his sister.

  Mine, the voice had said.

  ٢

  1153 B.C.

  The dark waters of the Nile lapped at the papyrus sidewalls of Petosiris’s boat. The great river sounded like a choir of chattering voices, the voices of the gods speaking from within its tide. He was grateful to be home.

  Resting against the bow’s curl, Chione stared back at him with her large brown eyes. “Was it very terrible?”

  Images of the massacre at Re’s Shadow flashed through his mind. She was always interested in his travels and in the bloodshed that inevitably followed.

  Rowing, he continued to listen to the voices in the river even as he answered. “It is always terrible, but it is my duty to Re to preserve his kingdom, and so the terrible is also beautiful.”

  He saw her confusion.

  “But not as beautiful as you,” he added.

  She blushed and dipped her head forward, unleashing her hair over her beautiful face. He reached out and uncovered her features, then ran one finger down her nose to her lips. She kissed his fingertip, her lips passing over the jade and ivory ring he wore, a partner to the one on her own finger.

  Petosiris spun to survey the river, searched for fellow travelers or fishermen, found none, and leaned in. Their lips met and he tasted her love for him, heard the prayers she spoke for him each night, felt the physical need that had grown while he was away. He kissed her deeper, delving into her thoughts and desires. He sometimes feared he would find wicked thoughts or hidden secrets there, as he had with previous lovers, but no, her love remained pure.

  When he pulled away, she said, “I love you.”

  “I know,” he said, and meant it more than she knew.

  She slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him down over her. A man of his position could not be caught in a situation such as this; any passing boat could report him and the punishment would be severe. But he needed to know everything there was to know of Chione, to feel every sensation from underneath her skin, every thought from within her head, and his need outweighed the risk. He settled her down beneath him, and they made love.

 
Afterward, as they dressed, she asked, “How?”

  She’d asked him this before and he’s answered, but the question had become part of their coupling ritual. He smiled, ran a finger over her exposed shoulder, and explained, “I trained with the last Priest of the Hidden Order, the last man to know the old ways, the last teacher of Re’s true language. He chose to instruct me only because I was born under a night sky where the stars aligned in a pattern he recognized. He taught me how to become an instrument of Re, a weapon against the darkness, how to fight with fist and blade and bow. And mind.”

  She slipped into her dress. “Go on, tell the rest.”

  “You know the rest,” he said. And she did. He’d refused none of her questions. He’d told her about his military training as a child, the tests, his indoctrination into the Order, the years of exercises and prayer recitation. He could tell she still couldn’t understand how he was able to know her innermost secrets with just a touch, or how he could seize control of her body during their lovemaking like a puppet master, or how he could influence her thoughts from across a room. He found great satisfaction in her lack of fear: she trusted him completely, even when he demonstrated his most frightening abilities.

  For this, he loved her.

  The sound caught Petosiris’s attention and he turned. Chione’s head turned, too, following his gaze. He knew that she had heard nothing out of the ordinary, just a gentle splash, perhaps the sound of a great crocodile slithering into the water from the shore. He knew better. Even before the turn in the river, he could sense half a dozen boats waiting. Military boats.

  Dropping an oar into the water, he stroked, pushing the boat deeper into the channel and angling it toward the river’s bend. A natural trellis of willow trees cleared from their view, revealing the waiting boats, each manned by six archers, bows bent, arrows ready to fly.

  Petosiris stood, stepped over Chione, and extended one hand. He studied the faces of the men. They were young recruits, all eager to prove their worth to the empire, none with any battle scars. He yelled, “Heel.”