Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  ‘Allah knows,’ he said. ‘You are the moghrebi?’

  The word, as far as he knew, meant a person who talks to demons. How did that get started? he wondered, never surprised at the power of rumour.

  ‘Never mind that,’ he said. ‘You’re sure he’s dead?’

  Looking at him a bit pityingly, the man drew a finger across his throat. ‘Scared to death,’ he said, in case Da Silva hadn’t got the message. The captain raised an eyebrow and pushed past him into the tent.

  Scattered pages of notes met his eye. The papyrus lay on the table. El-Aqman lay on the ground. Flies crawled on his delicate features, which were set in a rictus. Seeing the dead man’s expression, he understood the servant’s comment. The Egyptian’s eyes were wide open, his mouth gaping in a silent scream. His fists were clenched tightly, his body rigid.

  Above the corpse, El-Aqman’s ghost boiled. There was no other way to describe it. It was a writhing mist as thick as molasses and its surface seethed, as if unable to settle into a coherent form. Half-fascinated, half-appalled, Da Silva touched the man’s dead face and found it still warm. He had never encountered such a new ghost before, he realised. A shudder ran down his back and he turned around quickly. There was nothing there, of course.

  His leg throbbed fiercely at him as he squatted to gather the fallen papers. He could not read Arabic as well as he spoke it, and the scrawled words meant nothing to him.

  Papyrus of Setna. Book/books of Thoth. Tomb of Nefer-ka-Ptah son of Mer-neb-ptah (unknown). In Hermopolis? And again: Books of Thoth. All-powerful.

  He stared at the scroll on the table as if it were a scorpion, scratching his cheekbone thoughtfully. Then he picked it up as well and ducked under the tent-flap into the strengthening sun.

  ‘Well?’ Ruivo said, and Da Silva heard desperation in his voice.

  ‘I think he probably had a seizure,’ he said. ‘No, don’t go in. Here, these are his notes.’ He held out the papers.

  Ruivo took them from him reluctantly, and began to read. ‘Papyrus of Setna. Very ancient text. Surely—? Books of Thoth. Yes. Tomb of yes, where Setna found the magic book. Oh … my … God.’ His mouth dropped open.

  ‘Books of Thoth?’ Phoebe whispered. They exchanged glances in some kind of mystic communion, which annoyed Da Silva greatly.

  ‘He’s implying the papyrus is one of the Books of Thoth,’ Ruivo explained. ‘The spell to control the whole world and gain power over life and death. Supposedly written by the god himself. Thoth. That must be why it’s preserved so well.’

  ‘How old is the scroll?’ asked Da Silva.

  ‘Four thousand years,’ Phoebe replied.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Da Silva said. ‘Let’s put things in perspective here.’ He lit a cheroot. They helped him think. ‘Do you believe in the gods of ancient Egypt?’

  Do you believe in God? something said to him. He still did, he supposed, though not in the strictly Catholic way he had been brought up. The power of prayer, for one thing, was greatly overrated. And the power of priests too great. Well, some priests, anyway. The one who supplied him with holy water was a good and humble man.

  ‘Not as objects of worship,’ said Ruivo irritably. ‘What do you take me for? But if demons and evil spirits are real, I’m sure good and benevolent spirits exist. Other than angels, that is. And those may be what the ancient Egyptians worshipped. Akhnaton realised this—’

  ‘And you think one of these “good and benevolent” beings wrote this … magic spell?’

  With an impatient glance, Ruivo snapped back, ‘Why do you find that so hard to believe? What you do is magic.’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ Da Silva admitted. ‘But you’re asking me to believe something a lot more profound than talking to ghosts.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ said the archaeologist, looking slyly from El-Aqman’s tent to Da Silva and back again.

  Oh no.

  ‘Talking to ghosts?’ Phoebe asked in a puzzled voice.

  Da Silva rubbed the scar on his eyebrow again. ‘That’s how I knew where to find the papyrus yesterday.’

  ‘My God,’ she said, staring at him as if, he thought crossly, I’ve grown an extra head. It’s not as if nothing unusual happened yesterday! He turned to Ruivo, and expelled smoke.

  ‘And what would you ask the doctor? I can’t ask him how he died.’

  The archaeologist looked taken aback. ‘Well - er—’

  ‘Ask him what he found out?’ suggested Phoebe.

  ‘We know that.’ Da Silva pointed at El-Aqman’s notes.

  ‘These may not be complete,’ Ruivo said. ‘—Yes, what is it?’ This to El-Aqman’s manservant, who was hovering close by. Nervously, the man gestured towards the tent.

  ‘You have some bureaucracy to deal with,’ said Da Silva, glad to deflect Ruivo’s determination, even if temporarily.

  He walked slowly towards his tent. His leg was aching and he needed to sit down for a while. In addition, the sun was gathering strength rapidly, and he had left his hat inside. Damned desert, he thought wearily, not relishing the thought of a repeat performance of the previous day’s furnace heat. As far as he was concerned, the proper place for sand was on the sea-bed.

  Finding the patch of shadow in front of the tent had shrunk away, he carried on until he reached the communal canopy. The boy Ahmed was sweeping its canvas floor, and grinned widely when he saw Da Silva.

  ‘Is there any more of that coffee?’ the captain asked him.

  ‘Yes, boss. For both?’

  Looking round, he saw that Phoebe had followed him. He mimed drinking coffee at her, and she called, ‘Sure.’ Ahmed, correctly interpreting her tone if not the expression, scuttled off.

  ‘Tell me about the Book of Thoth,’ Da Silva said, sitting down gratefully.

  She didn’t reply at once, but sat down herself and drew a few deep breaths. A tear leaked out of her eye and she brushed it away impatiently.

  Damning himself for his insensitivity, Da Silva stood up again. Winced as pain shot along his leg. Went and put a hand on her shoulder.

  Phoebe came awkwardly into his arms, chokingly trying not to cry. He held her, regretfully, for a long minute, smelling the clean scent of her hair, and then she disengaged with an attempt at a smile.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Sorry to get all weepy on you.’

  ‘De nada,’ he said absently, remembering her wielding her flimsy parasol like a rapier, flinging the afrit’s unclean sword at it. Coming out of that calm as if she’d been at a tea party. He would never understand women. Come to that, a lot of men did incomprehensible things as well.

  ‘I didn’t even like him very much,’ she confided, blowing her nose. ‘He was too - smarmy, if you know what I mean. A lot of Egyptian men get that way over women. The ones that don’t think I’m a brazen harlot for wearing trousers, that is,’ she added, her smile less forced this time.

  At that moment, Ahmed came back with the coffee. Da Silva passed him a cheroot and found the boy looking at him curiously. He raised an eyebrow at him.

  ‘Is it true you killed an afrit yesterday, boss?’ he asked.

  With difficulty, Da Silva restrained himself from laughing. ‘Two,’ he said. ‘Now shove off.’

  The urchin laughed in delight, and scampered away. Da Silva resumed his seat and picked up his coffee. It tasted a bit like ground mud, but it was preferable to beer at eight in the morning.

  ‘Cigarette?’ Phoebe asked, offering him her case. ‘Or do you always smoke those awful things?’ Oh, why not, he thought. I wonder how many years it is since I smoked a cigarette? Her lighter flared, and he sat back, carefully stretching out his injured leg.

  ‘The papyrus?’ he reminded her.

  ‘Yes. Of course,’ she said. ‘Well, there are several references to Books of Thoth. Dr El-Aqman seems to think this is one called the papyrus of Setna. He was the son of the pharaoh Rameses the Second, and he was a magician. He was said to have found this book in a tomb in the necropolis at Memphi
s. The book had two very powerful spells in it. Now, the man who told him where to find it warned him that taking it away would be a bad idea, but old Setna did it anyhow. And he got the power he wanted, but he had such a miserable life that he eventually decided to put the book back where he found it and seal up the tomb again.’

  Tasteless. He knew it would be. But he went on smoking it. ‘Memphis is near Cairo, isn’t it?’ he said. Six hundred miles away.

  ‘Yes, that’s true. But the pharaoh whose tomb it was in hasn’t been identified. But if it was found once, it could be found again. Maybe whoever found it next just didn’t have Setna’s scruples.’

  Like Ruivo, she became more animated when talking about her favourite topic. ‘Do you know whose tomb it was you found?’ he asked her.

  ‘We think her name was Meryt-ankh,’ she replied. Pausing to extinguish her half-smoked cigarette, she looked up at him speculatively. ‘Luís.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you really speak to ghosts?’

  He nodded, his face expressionless. ‘It’s a talent I could live without.’

  ‘Could you speak to hers? Meryt-ankh’s? In the tomb?’

  Oh, God, yes, I suppose I could, he thought, remembering the claustrophobic chamber with distaste.

  ‘She’s been dead a very long time,’ he pointed out. ‘It might not be possible. And we can’t speak her language.’

  ‘Dr El-Aqman could,’ Phoebe said.

  Cigarette halfway to his mouth, he stared at her, a dozen thoughts warring in his mind. Eventually he said bleakly, ‘You’re a single-minded bunch of people, aren’t you?’ and stubbed out the cigarette in the tin ashtray.

  Da Silva, fortified if not mollified by a shot of arrack provided by Ruivo, sighed deeply and lit a cheroot to take the taste away. It had been more like drinking turpentine than anything potable. I’m fated to drink bad brandy all over the world, he thought. Looking around cautiously, trying to avoid the strong, sandy breeze, he slipped into the doctor’s tent. Phoebe and Ruivo hovered outside, supposedly standing guard but looking, he decided mordantly, more like the comic henchmen of a villain in a melodrama.

  El-Aqman’s body had been transferred to the camp-bed. It was still clenched in rigor. The Egyptian’s ghost, now a calm drift of transparent mist in the air, also lingered. In fact it would linger there for the rest of time, growing fainter as the years went by. It, like all the shades which were Da Silva’s near-constant companions, was merely an echo. An image. No more than a dickering nickelodeon film. The ghosts he summoned were another matter entirely.

  He would have to be quick, he knew. But calling ghosts - necromancy was a term he didn’t care for - wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that came with an instruction book. Well, maybe it did, but he had no intention of consulting that kind of text. Ever. He had also never tried to summon the recent dead before.

  His long knife was resting in its usual place, a sheath down his back, though not concealed. But he wanted to try something else before drawing blood, feeling, not unreasonably, that he had already shed enough.

  Unsure as to whether it would work, he put his hand on El-Aqman’s dead forehead. It felt like cold stone.

  ‘Dr Hassan El-Aqman,’ he said softly. The name echoed strangely in the tent. How could canvas echo? A shock ran up his arm, and he jerked his hand away, suspiciously eyeing the corpse.

  Which sat up and stared at him.

  He choked on smoke, and El-Aqman spoke. ‘So, Captain, now I know why they call you moghrebi.’’ His voice was much like it had been in life, but somehow hollower, without substance.

  ‘Only if you style yourself a demon,’ he said. The ghost, he now saw, had come to a sitting position out of the Egyptian’s body. It looked like an ill-defined pair of Siamese twins.

  El-Aqman’s ghost looked amused and freed himself from his corpse, swinging his feet over the side of the cot and standing in one fluid movement. ‘Come now, Captain. You summon ghosts, and you slay afrits. And more, I sense. What are you but a sorcerer?’ Da Silva blinked, unable to think of a good retort to this, and wiped a drop of sweat from his cheek. ‘So why have you summoned me?’

  You don’t know everything, then, do you? Da Silva said silently. ‘They want you to talk to someone named Meryt-ankh.’

  This time the ghost laughed. ‘You think you can summon a shade so old? Well, Captain, maybe you can. And maybe I can speak with her. But will she answer?’

  ‘Will you?’ asked Da Silva, and El-Aqman winced.

  ‘If I can,’ he said, i am yours to command.’ Now it was Da Silva’s turn to grimace. ‘Ah, you have little liking for that notion, I see. Perhaps you are a man of the light after all.’

  Intrigued as he was by this definition, Da Silva felt the pressure of passing time. ‘Tell me, then,’ he said, ‘is the papyrus the Book of Thoth?’

  ‘It is a Book of Thoth,’ replied the ghost, looking amused again.

  ‘Da Silva!’ came Ruivo’s voice, urgent and petulant. ‘Hurry up, man.’

  ‘Ah, the impatient Mister Ruivo,’ El-Aqman said. ‘Is this your command also?’

  Glaring at him, Da Silva said, ‘Yes, come on, let’s go.’

  Outside, the sun hammered down. Waves of scorching air rolled off the sand, and the light was as intense as the heat, bright as a phosphorus flame. There was no one around the camp. Apart from Ruivo and Phoebe, it could have been a city of the dead.

  Shading his brow and feeling sweat break out along his hairline, Da Silva put on his hat. Phoebe, having lost her parasol, had resorted to a headcloth.

  El-Aqman looked down at his spectral body curiously. ‘I never imagined a ghost would look so solid,’ he remarked in a conversational tone. ‘But then, I never believed ghosts existed in the first place.’

  By the time they reached the gully again, Da Silva’s clothes were soaked. His knife chafed. Sweat was running off him, not to mention collecting under his eyepatch. His leg ached fiercely, and the cut on his arm was stinging. Cursing under his breath, he sat down in the shade and repeated his boot-excavation. Phoebe borrowed his hat and fanned herself.

  ‘I am impressed, Captain,’ El-Aqman’s ghost said. ‘Not a trace of afrits. Not that I credited such things when I was alive, of course.’

  Da Silva put his boots back on and wiped his face with his sleeve. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ he said grimly. Before I change my mind and tell the whole pack of you to go to hell.

  He sent the ghost down the shaft first, followed it with knife in hand, because he felt safer that way. Phoebe, holding one of the lanterns, came third, and Ruivo brought up the rear, carrying the other. Their shadows, caught by the light, waxed and waned as they descended.

  The sultry, airless chamber was no more bearable on second acquaintance, even though Da Silva knew what to expect this time. He scratched his scar, supposing that it was logical for a seaman to find confined spaces oppressive. And especially confined spaces hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. Suddenly he desired, very strongly, the sea’s clean smell, a fresh clear wind. The sounds of ropes and canvas.

  Two living people and one dead one watched as he placed his knife on the empty sarcophagus and rolled up his shirtsleeves. It was the ghost who spoke.

  ‘That’s a formidable weapon, Captain,’ he said. ‘What do you use it for?’

  ‘Killing afrits,’ said Da Silva shortly. ‘Amongst other things.’ He wanted a smoke, and wished he had taken the opportunity to light up before charging down here. Too late now. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Better get on with it. Are you ready, El-Aqman?’ The ghost nodded.

  Picking up the knife again, he held his right arm over the gaping tomb and nicked the wrist, almost catching a small white scar. He was better at it this time. Just a couple of drops of blood fell into the sarcophagus.

  ‘Meryt-ankh,’ he said.

  And knew instantly that he had summoned a magician. They did not come easily. They resented being bound to his will. Which was understandable. The underground ch
amber shuddered and dust cascaded from the ceiling. His heart thumped at the sudden dread of entombment. A wave travelled across the stone floor, sending Ruivo reeling. Phoebe grabbed at the wall, Da Silva the edge of the shivering tomb …

  … Out of which came a roaring sandstorm, filling the chamber, obstructing sight, deafeningly loud. It roiled above the sarcophagus, dark as a thundercloud, howling. The air itself was fighting him. Sweat poured off his face, but he couldn’t pause to wipe it away. He shouted her name again, and the pressure seemed to ease a little, the wind to calm, to take shape. And so he said it a third time, and stilled the storm.

  Standing on the other side of the sarcophagus from Da Silva was a woman’s figure. She was tall, and quite plump. Having subconsciously expected her to look like the slim figures of the papyrus, he was oddly disappointed. Her robe was white, severely plain, but cut to display a generous amount of cleavage. The cloth was thin enough that her nipples showed through. Round her neck was a wide collar of beads and gold.

  El-Aqman spoke and she turned towards him, her face distorted like a Fury. Meryt-ankh’s voice thundered in Da Silva’s mind, battering at him. Her lips did not move. Her voice intruded on him, a trespasser in his head.

  I am the sorceress Meryt-ankh. I do not need shades of men. Begone. She made a brief gesture, and El-Aqman’s ghost turned into a pillar of white flame. From behind him, Phoebe gasped. He hardly heard her. Controlling this ghost was like trying to steer a ship in a hurricane. All my old servants are gone. I have had to seek new ones. Only Ammut, devourer of souls, still waits. Where are my guardians?

  ‘Your guardians are dead,’ he said hoarsely, and lifted his knife with an effort. The ancient ghost eyed it warily.

  By your hand. What do you want, necromancer?

  ‘What is the papyrus?’ he asked.

  ‘Is it the Book of Thoth?’ Ruivo added, having apparently still not learnt to keep his mouth shut around ghosts.

  The sorceress laughed, and it was terrible to hear, like the tolling of monstrous iron bells. You think to use the spells of the god, mortal? They will rebound on you, seventy times seven. Return me the papyrus.