Eternal Unrest: A Novel of Mummy Terror

by Dixon, Lorne; Cato, Nick

  His words were not reassuring. Her body remained tense.

  You misunderstand. You’re mine. My soul has passed down through the ages, from newborn to aged death to newborn, across this world in every land, but never in the same family twice. You and I … are the same.

  For a moment her world remained sane and his words failed to penetrate deeper than her ears, but then she felt the bottom drop out and the sensation of freefall and weightlessness. Slamming her eyes shut, she tried to scream but her mouth refused to open. The flicker-show inside her head rattled to life, projecting memories not of Dynastic Egypt, but her own childhood. She saw her mother, hair flowing in a strong wind, standing at the rails on the Jersey boardwalk, eyes staring out at the distant sea, vacant, lost. The same expression later, near comatose on her bed, as she stared down at Priscilla with pleading eyes and whispered, “You still have so far to go.”

  It was all true. She knew it on a deep-rooted instinctive level. She now understood why it had been so easy to hold her father’s mouth shut while the trapped spider crawled down his throat. All of her distrust that had sent her fleeing from the men who courted her, all the impulses not to let anyone get close, the constant waiting for betrayal where there was none—they were all echoes from his life and the horrors he’d faced.

  Opening her eyes, she asked, “But if I’m a reincarnation of you—”

  You make it too simple, it answered before she could finish her question. The soul is split between us, shared, incomplete. That is why I need you. Why it always had to be you.

  Chapter 37

  The truck followed a curve in the roadway, navigating around a dune, and straightened on the other side. A British military checkpoint appeared behind a curtain of heat-warped air. Two Daimler Dingo scout cars blocked the roadway and six soldiers stood in their shade, rifles slung around their shoulders.

  “We’re in an Italian truck,” Priscilla said. She wasn’t sure if Petosiris would understand the significance, but saw no difference in his gnarled expression. “Those are English troops. They’ll—”

  They’ll do nothing. They see a local merchant traveling with wares to sell, nothing more.

  She glanced at the rearview mirror at the wares on the flatbed truck. She wondered what the going rate was for dead Italians.

  She put her hands on the steering wheel and pretended to drive. There was never a question of escape. Petosiris had found her after two thousand years of searching the entire world; he could certainly find her in the open desert, and after witnessing the wholesale slaughter back at the Italian camp, she doubted what a handful of soldiers here could do.

  The truck pulled up to the checkpoint.

  A dark-haired soldier ambled over to driver’s side window, cocked his head, and spit to one side. His eyes slid from Priscilla to the passenger’s seat without blinking. She didn’t know what he saw sitting there, but it wasn’t enough to keep his attention. Her chest, however, did. His eyes never rose to her face. “What’s this, then?”

  Words came to her lips without warning. “Thirty heads of lamb for the mutton shops.”

  A second soldier came around and prodded the body bags on the truck’s bed. Priscilla’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror. As she watched the image changed: slaughtered lambs replaced the body bags.

  The soldier patted the window’s ledge. “Boys haven’t had a cut of lamb since we left George IV’s island. You seem to have a full load there. Maybe this old truck would run a few miles farther if you lightened the load by one?”

  “No problem,” a voice called from the passenger seat. Turning, she flinched as she caught sight of Buddy Martin sitting beside her. “Just, y’know, maybe a small one?”

  The soldier grinned. “Sure, just a wee one.”

  Back in the rearview mirror, the second soldier reached up, snared one of the body bags by a leg, and pulled it down into an embrace. He grunted, “It’s heavier than it looks.”

  “The tasty ones are,” Buddy said.

  Loading their prize into one of the scout cars, the solder laughed and slapped each other’s backs, savoring the anticipation of the night’s meal. The soldier at the window backed up, tossed up a quick wave, and said, “Don’t want to slow you down any more than we have to.”

  “Thanks,” Buddy said, and saluted.

  The truck rolled forward, past the checkpoint, and continued down the roadway beyond.

  When Priscilla faced Petosiris again, he wore his own mummified skin. “How do you do that?”

  “Men believe what they want. They see what they want. It is not difficult to cloud minds that are already unclear.” After this, he said nothing for hours as the truck rolled deep into the desert.

  The road ended, but their journey continued over hardened valleys of sun-baked sands. The sunlight grew more intense, bathing the land in blistering heat, and the animals disappeared from the landscape, seeking whatever shade or shelter they could find. Even the reptiles went into hiding as the heat built and the desert simmered.

  Wiping sweat from her cheeks and forehead, Priscilla settled back in her seat. In the sticky warmth, she exhaustion dragged down her eyelids, the waves of heat wafting through the windows lulling her to sleep. Just before nodding off, she considered it was not the raging midday heat that pulled her out of consciousness, but Petosiris. She still feared him—he was a monster, a murderer, a vile creature that should not have existed—but he no longer held her paralyzed in terror. Perhaps that, too, was by design.

  She dreamed of prayer circles and college lectures, Chione’s arms around her and the tickling stubble of Buddy’s chin, her mother’s deathbed rambling and the young Pharaoh’s chest so close to her clutching hand.

  Priscilla woke with a start as the truck came to a screeching halt. Bleary eyed and dazed, she stared across the truck’s empty bench seat at the passenger side door swinging on its metal hinges. Straightening up in her seat, she watched as Petosiris walked out into the desert. The sun was setting, deepening the sands from yellow to orange to dark red. The tall, undead Egyptian stopped and craned his head over his shoulder.

  Follow me now.

  The driver’s side door clicked then creaked open. Priscilla climbed out and followed his path out into the desert. There was sand and sky and nothing else; unlike most of the desert, here there was no stray African peyote cactus or wild brush. It felt like the most desolate place on Earth.

  She stopped several yards from where he stood and said, “There’s nothing out here.” And thought, They’d never find my body out here.

  The search is not for your body, he reassured her.

  Petosiris raised both arms into the air, fingers pointing up into the darkening sky. She heard him recite a complex, unspoken prayer in an ancient language that sounded something like a cross between Arabic and Urdu, but shared none of the vocabulary or cadence. The prayer had a song-like quality, a mixture of chant and verse recital, the words dovetailing like puzzle pieces. Priscilla heard other voices joining in, a vast prayer circle speaking in unison, old priests and young boys begging through chants for enlightenment, the words supplanting all other thoughts until the worshipers became one entity, humanity itself reaching out and begging to be heard.

  Priscilla joined the prayer. She did so without acquiescing or understanding, as if the prayer had taken possession of her voice. She would have expected herself to rebel and try to regain control, but reciting the prayer brought calm to her body and dispelled the last of her fears. Clarity came, too, and the words were no longer a mystery. While she could not decipher the language, the prayer’s meaning became obvious and her voice grew stronger and more confident. It was a prayer to Osiris, the Earth god, a celebration of his power and grace.

  The soil grew firmer under her feet, gelling like concrete, until the plane where she stood was as smooth and solid as a pane of glass. The effect spread outward, covering the surface of the valley.

  Still praying, Petosiris raised one foot and slammed it down, cr
acking the soil under his feet. A deep fissure raced across the earth, breaking off into smaller tributaries and forming complex symbols and hieroglyphs, basic caricatures of men and animals and combinations of the two. It was a complete pictorial history of Ancient Egypt. It told of the Kingdom’s early dynasties, the deaths of Pharaohs, the collapse of faith after the New Kingdom, and the final wars that doomed the empire.

  Petosiris regarded it with a forlorn expression.

  Raising his foot again, he brought it down with even greater force and the earth collapsed beneath it, large plates breaking free and falling away into a dark, subterranean abyss. The prayer died on Priscilla’s lips as the tiny earthquake reached her. She crouched down, ready to run, until his voice commanded her to remain still. The soil directly under her feet remained solid while on all sides it broke into pieces and sank away. The entire valley was disappearing, leaving only the sharp plateaus on which she and Petosiris stood.

  A tidal wave of sand rose up out of the void, swirling and blocking out any view, drowning out the world in a blur of motion. Covering her nose and mouth, she waited for the dust storm to pass. Gradually it died down and Petosiris came into view through the remaining haze.

  He had changed. No trick of the mind, this time, but an actual transformation. His withered and rotten body had repaired itself to a state of living flesh. Naked, his muscular body flexed as he swung his arms, commanding the remaining dust devils with wild gestures as if he was a conductor and the twisting soil his orchestra. Thrusting his arms out to his sides, the storm ended and the soil fell away. He stared across the open gulf with renewed eyes that seemed to glow with white-hot intensity and examined her with the precision of an electron microscope.

  He opened his mouth. A long, gnarled tongue tumbled out in loops and dangled. He snatched it up in his hand and tore it out. A line of blood drooled from the corner of his mouth. A new, human tongue darted out and licked it up.

  The prayer ended as the last of the earth settled.

  “Down,” he said, now speaking in a rich, fleshy baritone.

  She turned her gaze to the open chasm just beyond the tips of her shoes and was surprised to see a set of earthen steps lead deep underground. A second set trailed down from Petosiris’s plateau, winding and curving until the two paths joined together for the rest of the journey down.

  She took half a step down onto the first stair, paused before her toe touched it, and stared into the darkness below. After only a few feet there was a total absence of light that sent a jolt of panic through her. She realized in that moment just how rare it was to be surrounded by true pitch blackness. Even at night, in rooms locked tight with shades drawn, a minute amount of moon and starlight still trickled in. But here, as night fell overhead, she faced an honest void—too dark to describe, perfect nothingness.

  Petosiris climbed down to the bridge where the two rock staircases converged and the light dimmed, and turned. His long black hair seemed to float, as if even the oxygen had fled the dark. He held out a hand. “Come, now.”

  She shifted her weight and her foot landed on the first stair. She descended the steps, sliding on loose soil, arms out at her sides for balance, until she reached him. She stared at his outstretched hand for a long moment, unsure if she could bring herself to touch him, but felt a strange compulsion grow inside her. Following him was no different than gravity, a force so powerful and omnipotent that nothing could ever defeat it for long. She reached out and took his hand.

  He led her down into the darkness.

  The last of the light slipped away as they traveled, sending her into a blind march downward, Petosiris’s hand her only guide. The air was cool and wet and there was a damp scent lingering here, something like stagnant water or walls covered in slimy black mold. After a while the stairs leveled off and they walked forward, now side-by-side, trusting that he’d alert her to any sudden obstacle in their way. And how would he know it was there? She didn’t know the answer, but trusted he would, if not by sight then by some other, less natural sense.

  A faint blue-green glow pulsed in the distance, a small halo of light that looked as frail as the dying embers of a spent fire. She wanted to hurry to toward it, but Petosiris continued on at the same pace, no faster or slower, and seemed oblivious to the light.

  As they approached, the phosphorescent glow bloomed, its dim, arching light illuminating two immense stone doors buried in the bedrock. The doors were illustrated with thousands of lines of carved hieroglyphics. Even without the time to decipher each character, Priscilla understood that this was the prayer she and Petosiris had recited topside, repeated over and over.

  Petosiris gestured and the doors shook, displacing centuries of sediment and mineral growth, shaking off calcite crystals and shifting encroaching limestone. Freed, the doors sung inward several feet, wide enough to serve as a single-file entrance.

  A hollow, droning moan came from the opening as if the doorway was the mouth of a giant brass horn singing its lowest tone. The sound died away as Petosiris released Priscilla’s hand and stepped inside. She followed, a step behind but never more. They passed into an enormous domed room filled with statues of Ptah and Hathor and pillars inscribed with prayers. Covered by a thick layer of dust, one long, curving wall was painted in a simple yet expressive style, a portrait of a dark, handsome Pharaoh, his features exaggerated to god-like perfection.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  Petosiris pointed to an altar on the far side of the room. An ornate sarcophagus stood atop a sculpted base. Four ornate canopic jars peeked out from recesses cut into the wall on both sides.

  “This is the burial chamber of Pharaoh Hekamaatresetepenamun,” he said.

  Priscilla shook her head. “No, no. Ramesses IV was buried in the Valley of Kings. He’s been disinterred. His body’s in the Cairo Museum. I’ve seen it—”

  Petosiris laughed. “You’ve placed a decoy on display, a false king meant to thwart the intentions of grave robbers like your father. I saw the body of the old man they believe is Ramesses IV through Maurice Teasdale’s eyes. Your people understand nothing of our ways.”

  The tone of his voice had changed. Since leaving the Italian camp he’d treated her in a dismissive but civil manner. Now, though, the wickedness returned, the violent, growling rumble that she’d first heard in the back of the transport truck in England.

  Raising one arm, Petosiris spoke a few curt words. The gigantic doors slid shut, locking her inside the tomb. She felt an irrational urge to run to the exit and pound on the rock slabs with her fists and demand to be released. She knew that it would have been pointless, however, so instead she crossed her arms and asked, “Why did you bring me here?”

  He came to her, stood close enough for the rush of his breath to tickle her eyelashes, and said, “Your world has brought me the power to return. So much despair and agony. I am more powerful now than ever. But to finish this, to do what needs to be done, I need to be complete. I need to be one with the soul we share.”

  Priscilla took a sharp step back and extended both arms, putting several feet between them, and met the monster’s eyes. She’d seen resolve before—in her father’s face on a dig, in Buddy Martin’s eyes after lovemaking, even in the mirror on the night she ended her father’s life— but this was different. This was not simple fastidious determination or hardheaded stubbornness. The intensity gleaming in Petosiris’s eyes told her he would burn down the entire world without hesitation if it would bring him closer to his goal.

  She stuttered, “A-are y-you—”

  His movements were too quick and elaborate for her eyes to track. She saw only a blur of arms and hands, but in a decimal of a second he’d moved both of her arms to her sides, stepped around her, and locked her head in his arms. Squeezing, his massive arms brought unimaginable pressure onto her neck and shoulders and for a moment she was certain her spine would break loose from her skull, but then he kicked her feet out from under her and she hung from his arms, unabl
e to breathe and numbing all over. As the last of her body’s resistance faded away, he loosened his grip slightly and allowed her to gasp. The air rushed into her lungs and burned.

  In motion: he dragged her across the room, dodging pillars and stepping around statues, until she was face-to-face with the sarcophagus. There, he released her and let her crumble to the floor.

  Reaching over her, he took hold of the sarcophagus’s lid and shook it, brute force cracking through the numerous puzzle locks along its side. He swung it open.

  The remains of the young Pharaoh stood inside, propped against the back of the sarcophagus by papyrus ropes and metal spikes, his sallow face stretched, an uneven row of teeth jutting from his mouth. His twisted shape resembled the crisp corpse of an insect in a felt-backed display case, brittle to the touch, an empty fossilized shell.

  Petosiris grinned.

  “It is he,” he whispered.

  Seizing the back of her skull in one palm, he lifted Priscilla violently into the air and held her there, her nose only inches from the dead Pharaoh.

  Petosiris began to pray.

  It started as an irritation, a tickle on the back of her head, pins-and-needles against her skin, but then grew more intense, a combination attack of sunburn and paper cuts spreading outward, rounding her head and traveling down her neck. Then throbbing pain as the sensation dug deeper down to the muscles and ligaments. It felt like cramps and spasms all at once, overworking her muscle groups, stretching the skin. She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could the awful pain rushed inside, drawing out searing pain across her jaw and the roof of her mouth before rushing down her throat. The pounding, twisting, tearing agony intensified as Petosiris’s prayer repeated itself in her ears and head and in every screaming molecule of her being.

  It was a pain beyond death. It was the transcendent culmination of every imaginable horror a body could feel: the sensation of worlds being created and destroyed, starvation of entire races, endless cycles of pitiless genocide, crib deaths and sexualized murder on a global scale, genetic deterioration and the rot of living flesh.