Alex didn’t slow down at all, and Ren struggled to match his longer stride. Finally, the entrance came into view. There was a large stone complex with an iron fence extending from it in either direction and a heavy iron gate in the middle. To Ren, it looked less like the entrance to a cemetery than the entrance to a castle.
Alex exhaled loudly and stared at it. She knew what it looked like to him: just another obstacle in his search. He was being a jerk — again — but at least she felt like she understood that part a little better now. She wasn’t as close with her parents as Alex was with his mom, but she was surprised by how much she already missed them.
Still, she thought as they crossed the street, Alex could be nicer. He isn’t the only one making sacrifices. She glanced up at the silent cemetery. And he certainly isn’t the only one taking risks.
There didn’t seem to be anyone around as they approached the gate. “Do we, like, knock?” said Alex.
A door opened in the stone building to the right of the gate.
“May I help you?”
If you spend any time at all around museums — and Ren had spent a lot — there is a certain kind of older lady who becomes very familiar. Polite, polished, confident, and impeccably dressed. The very embodiment of this sort of lady stood before them now. She could have been their queen.
“Ah, little ones!” she said. “Gave me a fright. Things are a bit … unsettled here lately. I’m sorry, but you’ve missed the tour. Come back tomorrow, 1:45 sharp.” She paused to look around and frowned slightly. “And bring your parents, won’t you?”
“Uhhh, we …” said Alex.
Ren’s eyes went wide with alarm. Alex was smart in his own way — he certainly knew a ton about ancient Egypt. But he was trying to think on the fly now, and this did not always end well.
“We’re relatives?” he continued. “Of one of the, um, deceased? Inside?”
Interesting, thought Ren. The lady seemed to think the same thing, because she allowed him to continue. Alex seemed encouraged.
“Yes!” he said. “We’ve come all the way from America — it’s our last day here! We were hoping to … maybe …”
“You want to visit the grave?” volunteered the volunteer.
Alex nodded enthusiastically.
“I see,” said the lady. “And what is the name of your relative?”
“He’s English,” Alex began. Ren knew he was stalling. “His name is, um, London?”
Ren winced.
“London?” said the lady.
“Yes,” said Alex. “London, um, Penny … feather?”
“London Pennyfeather,” said the lady evenly, as if weighing the words.
Alex gave her a wide, defensive smile.
“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “I don’t think so.”
She turned on the heel of her stylishly functional leather boot and disappeared back into the little stone building. “Come back tomorrow!” she called a moment before the door slammed behind her.
Ren looked from the freshly closed door to the still closed gate, then at Alex. “London Pennyfeather?” she said.
Alex looked down sheepishly. “Yeah,” he managed. “Good old Great-uncle Pennyfeather.”
Ren chuckled and Alex just shook his head ruefully. It felt good to share a joke again.
But then the smile fell from Alex’s face and the determined set of his jaw returned. The change was too sudden for Ren to match, and the smile was still stranded on her face as Alex reached into his shirt and removed his amulet.
“I can get us in,” he said.
Alex was expecting a click, but instead he got a Ka-LUNKK!
It wasn’t the first lock he’d opened with his amulet, but it was definitely the largest — and the oldest by a solid century.
“Ready?” he said, looking back to find Ren stuffing her folder back in her messenger bag. She nodded. Study time was over. It was time for the test.
Alex released his amulet and gave the big gate a push.
Gate: KkREEEEEEEAAK!
Door: THUNNK!
Lady: “Stop right now!”
Alex and Ren made a break for it. Their feet slapped loudly on the stone tiles of the courtyard, and Ren’s folder fell out of her bag.
“Oh no!” she blurted.
Alex turned and saw loose papers spilling across the stone and the woman closing in on Ren. “Come on!” he called. “It’s just printouts!”
Ren resumed running, and she and Alex quickly pulled away. They reached the edge of the courtyard, and Alex felt a sense of crazy elation as he took the old stone steps two at a time. For twelve years, he’d been the sick kid, the frail kid. He couldn’t remember the last time he made it through a full gym class.
And now? He felt the wind push his hair back as he ran. For all it cost, he thought, coming back from the dead definitely has its benefits. He imagined his mom, alone with him in that hospital room, reciting the spell that gave him this new life. The last thing she did for me … He shook his head hard, on the fly.
Old graves sprouted on either side of a central path, large stone monuments with moss climbing the sides and lichen clinging to the tops. Death and decay and life all at once.
“This way!” Alex called to Ren, a few feet back. They switched directions without breaking stride and headed down a muddy side path. Carefully planted trees had gone rogue over the years and now sprang up all around them.
Twenty yards in, they stopped.
“Think we lost her,” he said, huffing and puffing.
“We lost her,” Ren began, pausing for a gulp of air, “thirty feet after we found her.” Another huff. “She didn’t make it out of the courtyard.”
They grabbed a few more lungfuls and then straightened up and started walking.
“I can’t believe I dropped my folder,” said Ren, grimacing.
“Just printouts of news stories and stuff,” said Alex, and he was mostly right. Except for the letter at the end: the one on Dr. Aditi’s official museum letterhead.
“Anyway,” said Ren. “I think I remember where the first disturbance was.”
They walked on, looking at the elaborate sculptures on the graves: angels, crosses, and more surprising shapes. Many of the monuments listed the occupations, and even the addresses, of the deceased. Others provided clues to their lives.
“I’ll bet that was his pet,” said Ren, pointing to a sad stone dog, curled up at the base of a tombstone.
“Bet he was a carriage driver,” said Alex, pointing to a large stone carriage on top of another. “It reminds me of Egypt.”
“Because of the, like, coffin-y things?” said Ren, nodding at the nearest one. The bodies here weren’t buried. They were interred in stone boxes aboveground.
Alex looked at one. The resemblance to an Egyptian sarcophagus was unmistakable. “Yeah, and just, I don’t know, the idea that you can take it with you.” He pointed back at the stone dog. “That guy’s kind of like your new friend, you know?”
“That little cat gave me the creeps!” said Ren, but with a small smile on her face. Then she stopped and pointed up the path. “There’s the first one.”
The torn remains of blue-and-white police tape flapped idly in the breeze, a dead giveaway. They walked over slowly.
“Orvath Bridgers,” said Alex, reading the raised letters on the large stone box. “Sounds like two clothing companies got married.”
The top of the monument had been lifted back into place, but Alex eyed the fresh cement filling the jagged line that ran down its center. Hundreds of pounds, but it had been knocked off and shattered like a plate to get at what was inside — or who was.
“It says Orvath was a goldsmith,” said Ren.
Alex read the line, GOLDSMITH TO THE RICH AND ROYAL, and sized up the expensive monument. “If you thought you could take it with you,” he said, “what would a famous goldsmith take?”
They headed up the hill toward the next grave, Ren leading the way and both of them turning this
new puzzle piece over in their minds.
“They robbed graves in ancient Egypt, too,” said Ren.
“Yeah, but if they caught you back then, they cut off your hand.”
“Gross,” said Ren, but then she had another thought. “It’s like the Crown Jewels. The gold, I mean. It’s fancy, just like with …”
“The Stung Man,” said Alex, remembering. “Like how he decorated his tomb with stolen loot, nice things.”
“Yeah, but it’s more than nice things this time,” said Ren. “This is treasure.”
Alex nodded. Treasure stolen from a grave … “Let’s check out the next one.”
They continued up the slope and turned a gentle corner on the path.
“Here it is,” said Ren. “And you thought this place reminded you of Egypt before.”
Alex couldn’t believe what he was seeing, not how strange it was, but how familiar. A massive stone archway towered above them, with columns carved on either side. It may be balanced on an English hillside, thought Alex, but the style is all Nile.
“They call it Egyptian Avenue,” said Ren, earning her extra credit.
Alex could see why immediately. “It’s a tomb front,” he said, noticing the carved lotus flowers. “I mean, you could plop this thing down in the Egyptian wing at the Met and no one would look twice. The size, the style, the columns … everything.”
“Not everything,” said Ren, pointing at the twin rows of shadowy doorways that lay beyond the archway. “These tombs are aboveground.”
They ventured slowly under the archway and into the avenue. The linked crypts loomed on either side of them, their worn stone facades speckled with moss and age, their heavy doors painted black as night.
“I don’t know,” said Ren, falling a few steps behind. “Maybe we should come back with Dr. Aditi …”
“What good would that do?” said Alex dismissively. “She doesn’t even have an amulet.”
“Neither do I,” Ren said under her breath, but Alex was already talking again.
“Here it is,” he said.
In front of him, one of the black doors hung open, half off its hinges. He scanned the facade. “There’s no name on this one, no nothing,” he said. “Did the articles say who it was?”
Ren mumbled her response, her eyes fixed on the darkness within. “No. Said the records burned up in World War II.”
“That’s weird,” said Alex, taking another step forward and craning his neck to look inside. The thin slice of gray light coming through the broken door revealed three large ceramic jars. Alex had seen ones just like them at the Met, but even in Egyptian Avenue, this seemed too much.
“Are those … canopic?” said Ren, standing a little farther back.
Alex shook his head. These weren’t the small ceremonial jars that held the internal organs of the deceased. These were larger, more functional. “These hold provisions,” he said. “For the afterlife … Food, drinks … grain, maybe …”
He was so engrossed that he didn’t feel his amulet getting warmer against his already warm chest.
“Know a lot, boy,” he heard. At least, he thought that’s what it was. The voice was so thick and scratchy and raw that it was hard to tell for sure.
The friends spun toward the voice, Alex already preparing his excuses: My great-uncle! A class project! But it wasn’t a volunteer they saw, no groundskeeper or gardener.
Alex’s blood turned to ice water and his breath caught in his throat.
The man they were looking at seemed to stand nearly as high as the columns. His jaw was square and his chest was wide, and everything about him was wrong, an abomination. His outfit, once tan, by the looks of it, was now stained with thick streaks of dirt and mud. The gaudy gold jewelry encircling his neck and one wrist was tarnished by time and death. The man’s skin was mottled and uneven; in some places it was stretched taut and dry, like a mummy’s, and in others, it hung loose, like a pale old man’s. The jagged breath slipping from his mouth spoke of damage inside. And yet, the dead man stood in broad daylight, smiling at them with time-yellowed teeth.
Alex knew immediately that it wasn’t a friendly look.
It was a hungry one.
Alex reached up for his amulet, still resting lightly outside his shirt.
The thing followed the movement and caught a glimpse before Alex’s hand wrapped around it.
“A scarab,” he rasped, barely intelligible.
Alex hardly heard it anyway, all his attention drawn to the creature’s eyes. They were like reverse stars, dots of pure black hovering in the soft gray afternoon light. He immediately, instinctively knew the truth. He’d seen that black light before. These eyes were windows into the afterlife. He looked inside, transfixed.
“Death Walker,” he said, his lips forming the words almost despite him.
The Walker smiled wider. “Yyessss,” he hissed.
“Alex!” called Ren from behind him. “Let’s GO!”
The smile vanished and the Death Walker paced forward, heavy old boots thudding into the soft ground. One step, two steps … A few more and he would be close enough to grab Alex’s amulet. Or throat.
But Alex was pretty fast himself these days. With a move he’d practiced a hundred times back home, and a hundred more in the park at night, his left hand squeezed the scarab as his right hand shot up.
A powerful phantom wind rose up. “The wind that comes before the rain,” a force of seasonal rebirth in Egypt. The gusts staggered this Walker, as they had the last one.
It wasn’t enough to stop him, but it was enough to slow him and knock him off balance.
Alex pulled his hand back, allowing the creature to stumble into the sudden lack of resistance.
The Walker spat out half a dozen ill-formed words; the only ones Alex caught were “crush you.”
Ren grabbed Alex’s shoulder. “Come on!”
Alex shook her off and his hand shot up a second time. Instead of spreading his fingers wide, he pointed them tightly. It was a move born of desperation and anger, but it worked. What shot forth was not a wall of wind but a spear of it. The force struck the Walker on his left shoulder, and he spun back, falling to one knee.
In the few moments it took the Walker to get to his feet, Alex and Ren scrambled down the row of crypts and back onto the path. But just as Ren turned to sprint down the slope, Alex skidded to a stop. The Walker appeared under the arch.
“Alex!” Ren yelled.
But Alex didn’t move, and once again, Ren reluctantly stood by her friend.
The towering Walker glared at him and Alex glared right back. “Tell me where my mom is!” he shouted.
The Walker responded to the pain in the boy’s voice with a desolate and broken wheeze, a laugh like a smoker’s cough.
Alex screamed back: no words, just a howl of frustration. His hand shot out, the fingers pointed again. The spear of wind whistled straight toward the Walker’s head. The creature opened his mouth wide and ate it. The wind disappeared into a howling vacuum inside.
As Alex watched, the mouth opened wider, wider — too wide — and it blackened. Alex felt a sudden chill shoot through him, and then he felt something else: a tearing pain seemed to come from his whole body at once. He felt as if he was being unzipped. From head to toe: unzipped.
He heard a scream and turned toward its source: Ren. Just a few steps away, she was caught in the same attack. For a moment, he saw her standing there, leaning back with her heels dug in to resist the wind pulling her toward the horrible, distended mouth. And then he saw a flicker and a blur as a mirror image of his best friend slowly began to pull away from her body.
Her soul, he realized in horror.
He looked down and saw the same thing happening to him, but not in the same way. Instead of the vibrant colors peeling free from Ren’s small frame, he saw a gray and misty tinge to his.
It felt like losing hope, like that poisoned-gut moment between dropping something precious and seeing it shatter. It felt l
ike that, if the thing you’d dropped was your life and all you’d ever loved.
In that awful moment of misery, he knew he had to act. Not just for himself, but also for his friend. He could see a full second image of her head now, bending away from her body and toward the Walker.
Not much time. He felt nearly hollow inside.
He was so cold now, almost frozen. His hand was still wrapped tightly around the scarab, his head still pounding with the effort, but his right hand could no longer do anything but point toward the powerful vacuum pulling it forward.
Alex reached up with the only thing he could still control: his eyes. He flicked them up, scanning the air above the path.
He found what he was looking for.
He locked on.
Then, with all the strength and will he had left, he jerked his entire head down in one sharp nod.
The branch he’d been staring at came down with it.
KaaRRRRRAACCCCCK!
The Walker looked up in surprise, pointing his open mouth at the falling branch. Instantly, a shadow image of brown wood and green leaves tore free and disappeared down his gaping maw. A moment later, the branch crashed down on his oversized frame, knocking the foul man-thing to the ground.
Free.
Alex could feel it instantly. He gasped deeply and heard Ren doing the same next to him. He knew it wasn’t just air returning to their bodies.
This time, he was the one to yell it: “RUN!”
They sprinted headlong down the hill. He’d been wrong to try to force this fight. He’d used the amulet to banish the first Death Walker back to the afterlife, and he knew that, somehow, he would need to do the same with this one. It was why they were in London.
But he also knew he needed more: the Book of the Dead, the right spell, the right moment — and this was not it. They needed to regroup, to plan. They needed to escape.
A loud noise echoed behind them, the sound of splintering wood, and they ran faster. He could feel his churning legs pumping heat back into his chilled body. As they descended the hillside, the gatehouse came into view. From the vantage point of the hillside, he spied something he’d missed before: a smaller side gate. It seemed a better bet than the big main gate — and he didn’t want to lead that thing back to the white-haired lady.
Amulet Keepers Page 6
