Book of the Dead

by Michael Northrop

  “I can assure you that is my real name,” said Todtman. His tone was measured, but Alex knew he wasn’t unaffected by what had just happened. Ren’s hands weren’t the only ones that were shaking.

  “I am associate director of the Neues Museum in Berlin,” Todtman continued, his accent coloring his words just slightly. “I am an Egyptologist and a colleague of your mother’s — and a friend. We are members of a sort of … there is a word for it in German, but I do not think there is quite the right one in English. A sort of … group, perhaps?”

  “A secret society?” said Ren, leaning forward.

  “Mmmmm, more like … a professional organization. Some call us the Keepers. We are scholars, mostly. We help each other in our studies, share our findings — sometimes we read the same book.”

  “You’re … a book club?” said Ren.

  Todtman smiled. Alex had seen that smile before: The heavy flesh of his cheeks creased and lifted, the already buggy eyes opened even wider. It had seemed sinister to him when he first met Todtman, but now it seemed less frog-like and more friendly.

  “You had his mom’s beetle thing,” Ren accused.

  Alex felt a flash of guilt. He should have said that.

  “She left the amulet for me,” said Todtman with a shrug. “At least that’s what I think. It was found in a case in the new exhibition. A loose piece, out of place … she had to know it would be brought to me.”

  “Wait,” said Alex, determined to get his head around it all. “Is anyone going to talk about the crazy undead mummy that just tried to eat our souls?”

  “We’re getting to that,” protested Ren. “We have to start with things I can understand or my head is going to explode, all right?”

  “All right,” he said. He could hear the strain in Ren’s voice and see the confusion in her eyes. Her world had just turned upside down.

  This was easier for him. He’d been raised on stories of ancient Egypt and ancient magic. He just had to accept that those stories were true — and how could he deny that now? He tried to come up with a question that wasn’t too head-explode-y. “The guard in the mask. You called him Al-Dab’u? And he could do things — we could all do things …”

  “Not all of us,” said Ren, more to herself.

  Todtman considered the question.

  “Yes, let’s start with him. Not a guard, not really — though he had me fooled. He works for an organization out of Egypt, very powerful,” said Todtman. “They call him Al-Dab’u — the Hyena. I’m sure you can see why.”

  Ren nodded. One clear connection, one answer. Todtman continued.

  “And the organization, well, I’m afraid they are a secret society. They are called The Order, at least that’s how you’d say it in English. In Egypt, people think of The Order like the mafia in Italy, or the yakuza in Japan: powerful, violent, and with strange traditions. And like those organizations, this one is very old. But they are not truly like the others.”

  “Why not?” said Ren. “We have the mafia here, too, by the way.”

  Todtman tipped his head, thanking her for the information. “Because they are a death cult,” he said. “The mafia, here or there, the yakuza; they exist for the money, the power. The Order serves a man who has been dead for thousands of years. They’d been hunting for the Lost Spells, because their ultimate goal is to bring him back.”

  “The Stung Man?” said Alex.

  “No, but like him.”

  “A Death Walker?” said Alex.

  “How do you know about the Death Walkers?” said Todtman, surprised. “But yes, another Death Walker.”

  “Think I read one of your books …”

  “Wait, there’s a book?” said Ren, sitting up straighter. “Can I read it?”

  Alex was about to answer when Todtman held up one finger.

  “What?” said Alex, eager for another revelation.

  Todtman lowered his finger and pointed it at the door. As he did, there was a loud knock.

  “I’ll have to get that, I’m afraid,” said Todtman. “It’s the police.”

  “Just one minute, please!” he called toward the door.

  “Obviously, we have much more to discuss,” he said, lowering his voice again.

  “Obviously,” echoed Ren, shooting him a look that said, And don’t you forget it.

  “Yeah, like what does this have to do with my mom?” said Alex, hating that his voice broke. “And the amulets? And —”

  “I know this is difficult,” said Todtman, “but right now, the police will want to talk to us. And you need to listen to me carefully.”

  “You want to tell us what to say?” said Ren.

  “You could put it that way, but please understand. These people — that creature — there is nothing the police can do. Guns, prisons, juries … They are no obstacles to him. And if we were to say what we saw here tonight, what we did …”

  “We’d be the ones who’d get locked up,” said Ren.

  “ ‘Mass psychosis,’ ” said Alex.

  “At the very least, it would get in the way of what we need to do. And we want the same thing.”

  “To stop them?” said Alex.

  “Yes, and to find what was taken.”

  “And my mom.”

  “Of course.”

  Alex looked him in the eyes, and he thought he saw understanding there. This man had said he was his mom’s friend.

  “You called my mom? Before she left?”

  “A friend of ours was hurt, in Cairo. She was upset. We both were.”

  Alex nodded. He decided to believe him. What choice did he have?

  Another knock on the door, louder this time. Todtman and Alex both looked at Ren. She nodded, too. “Okay.”

  “I’ll have to unlock that,” said Todtman, looking at the door as if it were a thousand miles away. He glanced down at his own amulet — in the shape of a bird, Alex noticed — then over at the bottle of headache pills. He pushed back his chair. “I think I’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”

  As Todtman got up and walked past them, Ren leaned over to Alex. She wasn’t shaking anymore. “Do you believe this?” she whispered.

  “What part?” he whispered back.

  “They’ve got a death cult,” she said as the door opened behind them. “And we’ve got a book club.”

  And after all of that, Alex had to head back across town — and hope no one had pulled that ladder back up. “I don’t think they’ll come after you,” Todtman had said by way of good-bye. “Not right away. But maybe you should take a taxi.”

  Not exactly comforting. Still, Alex needed some time to himself to process all this, and he was still exploring the limits of his newfound strength, so he decided to walk home. He made his way slowly through Central Park, sticking to the well-lit main roads and keeping a close eye on the shifting shadows around him. Mostly, though, he thought about his mom. She felt both closer now and further away. This organization, The Order, must have her, he thought. The Order must have taken the Lost Spells and my mom. Alex considered Todtman: He was definitely strange, but he’d saved his life and Ren’s, too. Could he help me save my mom?

  Alex held his hand out in front of him to see if it was still shaking. Just a little. He reached up with it and wiped away the tears that were beginning to well up in his eyes. He was alone now, and he was a mess. He needed a plan — or something he could do —

  He took the familiar amulet out from under his shirt and looked at it for a few steps. It was beautiful but also plain, just polished stone and refined copper. It was a winged beetle, carved thousands of years ago — and it could do things. He wasn’t sure exactly what, but there was no doubt it was special.

  Mom must have known, he thought. Why didn’t she tell me? She’d always protected him, he knew that, but had she always kept him in the dark, too? He shook the thought out of his head and felt the amulet’s silver chain scratch against his neck. He reached up for it again. “All right, little beetle,” he said softly, “let
’s see what you can do.”

  He looked around him, in front and behind, and waited for a lone jogger to pass. He closed his left hand around the scarab, a sense of anticipation, of something about to happen, tingling through him. His mind raced and his pulse revved. He took the last of the ebbing adrenaline inside his body and focused it.

  Alex pushed his right hand out toward the top of a nearby tree, thick with fat green summer leaves. A leaf began to whip. Then the whole branch started to sway. He tightened his grip and pointed his fingers, and the leaves began to tear free and fly off into the softly glowing New York night, and it was so unbelievable that Alex couldn’t help but laugh at the strangeness of it. He released the amulet and looked at his hand. Yep, he thought, that really happened.

  He kept walking and breathed deeply. He had a lot of practice with that. His pulse began to slow; his nerves began to calm. He missed the rush before it was even fully gone. A single word formed in his racing mind: dangerous. After a lifetime of caution, he kind of liked the sound of that.

  What else could it do? Todtman had done something to Al-Dab’u’s mind.

  “Get out of my head”? Isn’t that what he’d said? Is that how he beat him? Another jogger passed. Alex held the scarab and touched his other hand to his temple. He looked at the jogger, her ponytail swinging left-right, left-right as she ran. Turn around, he thought. TURN AROUND. Nothing. Hop! he tried. Jump! Nothing. She turned the corner and was gone.

  Either his amulet didn’t work that way, or he wasn’t doing it right. And now his head was starting to hurt, too. The rush he liked. The headache, not so much. He let go of the amulet and walked on in silence toward his aunt and uncle’s apartment. The darkness was full of eerie rustlings, but Alex was too exhausted to care.

  As he approached the west side of the park, he saw a group of people clustered near a streetlight by the entrance. They were looking down at something on the ground. It took Alex a moment to realize it was a person. He hurried over, taking out his cell phone as he ran.

  “What’s wrong with her?” said a man in a Yankees cap.

  “She says she was bitten,” said an old lady holding a very small dog.

  “Bitten?” said the man.

  “Look at her leg,” said a younger woman.

  Alex crowded in. It was the jogger from before. He had a flash of panic: Did I do that? But when he saw the wound, he knew he hadn’t. There was a swollen red circle just above her ankle. The jogger had her eyes closed and her teeth clenched.

  “Are there any snakes in the park?” said the man as they waited for the ambulance.

  The old woman gasped. “I’ve never seen one here!” she said, holding her little dog tighter.

  Alex scanned the ground one last time and caught a sudden jitter of movement at the edge of the streetlight’s glow.

  Just a quick glimpse of a small, spiky shadow.

  Alex would’ve had no idea what it was.

  If he hadn’t seen the stinger.

  Alex and Ren met across the street from the museum the next morning and waited for Todtman. “Hey, did you bring that Death Walkers book?” said Ren.

  “Couldn’t find it,” said Alex. “I could’ve sworn I had it by the window, but it wasn’t there.”

  “You ask your aunt and uncle?”

  “Said they hadn’t seen it.”

  “What about your cousin?”

  “Luke’s not much of a reader.”

  “Oh, wait, here comes Todtman.”

  He walked up carrying an extremely large coffee in one hand and a newspaper under one arm. “Good morning,” he said. “Let’s walk.”

  He headed toward Central Park, and Alex and Ren tagged along on either side.

  “We should, uh, watch our step in here,” said Alex, eyeing the ground as they entered the park.

  “Indeed,” said Todtman. “There’s something I want to show you. You both have strong stomachs, I hope.”

  Alex and Ren glanced over at each other: strong stomachs?

  “And you’ve both seen the news?”

  Todtman flashed the front page at them. The headline: “Stung Man Sprung from Cursed Exhibit.”

  “They didn’t mention us by name,” said Ren. “But they mentioned you.”

  “Did you get in trouble?” asked Alex.

  “Not exactly,” Todtman said cryptically, dropping the paper in a trash can without breaking stride.

  They hooked a right and headed deeper into the park.

  Ren tested the water with a softball question. “So what’s your deal anyway?” she asked Todtman. “Why Egypt? Why not …”

  “Please don’t say World War II,” he said, not unkindly. Alex looked around to see if anyone was following them or listening in. Todtman continued: “Egypt has been a passion of mine since I was young — younger than you two. I took a trip when I was eight.”

  “It’s not as far from Germany,” volunteered Ren.

  “True, but still far. My family was neither rich nor poor, and the trip was a big event. My father had gotten a bonus, I believe. In any case, eight years old. I’d never seen anything more impressive than a well-made cuckoo clock, and here were pyramids as high as skyscrapers. We floated down the Nile and our guides took us down into a tomb. The sarcophagus was still inside. I was done for. Hooked.”

  Alex knew the feeling, but they hadn’t come here to talk about vacations. “Shouldn’t we go someplace private?” he said, waving his hand at the park’s famous scenery.

  “But this is very private today, isn’t it?” said Todtman.

  Alex looked again. The park should’ve been packed on a summer day like this, but the trails were mostly empty. He didn’t see a single jogger. He remembered the scene last night, the face twisted in pain. He could understand that. But what about the tourists, the dog-walkers …

  He heard a rustling just off the path and jumped away.

  “There are scorpions here,” he said.

  It sounded silly in the daylight, but he knew what he’d seen. And the others weren’t exactly laughing.

  “They’re all over the city,” said Ren. “Didn’t you read any of the other stories?”

  Alex shook his head. Ren gave him a disapproving look and turned toward Todtman. “The news says it’s because of people releasing ‘exotic pets’ and climate change.”

  Todtman considered that for a moment as they walked. “When faced with the impossible, people will always cling to what they know,” he said.

  This time Alex gave Ren a look. She ignored it.

  “Was that a real mummy?” she asked. No more softball questions.

  “Quite real,” said Todtman.

  “He didn’t look like one,” she countered.

  “True, his life force has returned to his body.”

  A flash of recognition nearly stopped Alex in his tracks.

  “How is that possible?” said Ren, but Alex could hear the fight leaving her voice. She’d seen the same thing he had, and it wasn’t some nut job in gauze.

  “No, my turn,” said Alex. “What are, um, what about the amulets?”

  Todtman had been expecting that one: “We only know of a handful with these kinds of powers, though there could be more. Mine is in the shape of a falcon, the symbol of the watcher.”

  “Because of their eyesight,” said Ren.

  “Yes,” said Todtman, “and their range.”

  “Mine, well, my mom’s, it’s a scarab,” said Alex.

  “Yes, the returner, a symbol of rebirth and regeneration.”

  Another flash of recognition. Ren snuck in a question as Alex began to put the pieces together. “How did you find them?”

  Todtman cocked his head to consider. “We think they found us. Alex’s mother was the first. She found the scarab on a dig near Sudan. I found mine in a market bazaar.”

  “So anyone could have …”

  “I don’t think so. They only seem to work for one person — one person at a time, at least. It’s like they put thems
elves in our path. Hundreds of people must have picked mine up and felt nothing, no spark of recognition. And I felt none with the scarab.”

  “And they each do different things, don’t they?” Alex asked.

  Todtman fixed Alex with his bugged-out eyes and smiled. “You understand, then. I thought you might, once I saw you use the scarab. Yes, all of them can do certain things. Move small objects, and so on, but mine, well, I can see things quite clearly sometimes. When the power went out, I knew to go straight to the sarcophagus. I can also control people to an extent. A watcher can also be a boss, of course, an overseer. But the scarab, it’s much more powerful.”

  “I can do, like, a wind thing,” said Alex.

  “The wind that comes before the rain,” said Todtman. “Another kind of rebirth — but the scarab can do much more than that. It’s the reason we’re all here, isn’t it?”

  “Wait, what do you mean?” said Ren.

  Alex turned the words over. The next piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and everything in him went cold. “The reason I’m still here …” he said.

  Ren looked from Todtman to Alex and back. “Tell me!” she said as they took another turn, heading deeper into the park. They were far from the street now, and the trees seemed to close in around them.

  “In the hospital, my mom …” He turned to Todtman. “I thought I dreamed that, but …” He almost couldn’t say it. “She used the amulet, didn’t she?”

  “She used the Lost Spells,” he said. “I warned her not to — no offense to you, Alex — but she was desperate. It seems the scarab can activate the Book of the Dead. I believe we saw that last night, too. I think that’s what spooked the Stung Man. It can give the old spells their power back. And the Book of the Dead is very powerful, whether it’s moving someone toward the afterlife — or, in the case of the Lost Spells, bringing them out of it.”

  Alex remembered the ancient text, glowing faintly. His head reeled at the implications. “Mom brought me back,” he whispered. “Reattached my life force.”

  “The returner,” said Todtman.

  “But not just me …”