Sa…Ka…Seshat…Ankh…star in a circle thing.
Which reads as: protection…spirit…memory/knowledge…life…not sure about the last one.
It sounds like a bunch of random words, not a title or instructions.
Sighing, I figure I won’t make much progress until I figure out what the last symbol means. It’s reminiscent of a pentagram, but if this is a sentence rather than a name, I doubt it means protection as well. That idea is already covered with Sa. I go back to my computer and click on another link talking about Sir Alan Gardiner, who apparently was one of the first to group hieroglyphs into similar meanings. I skim through the explanation of the section about sky, earth, and water. Scrolling down, my focus blurs as I skip from image to image. Halfway down, a little group of starfish looking symbols catch my eye and I wake up.
Month…nope.
Feast of the half-moon…not a full circle.
Star/constellation…not sure what that would have to do with anything, and the circle is missing.
N15 Log; afterworld…that’s it!
“Kyran!” I say excitedly. “I found it. I found the last one! Look at this. What does N15 Log mean?”
He abandons whatever he was looking at and turns my computer to face him. His eyes widen as he sees the symbol we’ve been searching for. “N15, that’s just the Gardiner group system reference. Log is short for logogram. It means it’s a single symbol that stands for a whole concept or idea.” He squints at the computer. “Afterworld, huh?” He shrugs. “That certainly seems relevant.”
“Right?” I scribble the meaning down next to the hieroglyph and consider all the meanings again.
Protection…spirit…memory/knowledge…life…afterworld.
It still seems like a random list of words, but I remember how the online translations from the Book of the Dead often left out articles and pronouns. Suddenly, it feels like one of those comprehension games where the words are all backwards or random letters have been switched out, but you can still read the message. If this is a title, I can’t think of anything that really makes sense. If…if it’s instructions….
“We need to fill in the gaps,” I say.
“What?”
“The missing words.” I shove a printout of a translation at him and vaguely gesture at the incomplete sentences written out under the symbols.
“Oh, yeah.” He frowns. “I’ve just gotten used to them not being there and just fill in the gaps automatically.”
I shake my head at him. He talks like he’s been doing this for years and it’s all become second nature. Days, not even two weeks yet, that’s how long he’s been attempting to interpret Egyptian. I’m not going to knock it, though. Weird gifts are nothing to ignore.
“So, what does this say?” I ask. “Think of it as instructions rather than a name.”
Frowning, Kyran studies the string of hieroglyphs. “Protection of…the spirit’s memory—or knowledge…could be either—during…no between…life and…the afterworld.” He shrugs. “I’m really just guessing on most of this.”
I doubt very much that he’s just guessing. Maybe he doesn’t understand what he’s doing, but it’s more than that. I run his words back through my mind and consider what it means. “The Sa hieroglyph,” I ask, “could it just be protect rather than protection? Like a command?”
Kyran considers my question, first with uncertainty and then more resolutely. “Yeah, I think so.”
“So that would make it…protect the spirit’s memories between life and the afterworld. Right?”
Nodding slowly, Kyran says, “Yeah. That seems right. It’s a purpose, not a name.”
“Have you found Timothy’s story about the Caretaker yet?”
Holden, who’s clearly been listening in this whole time, scoots his chair closer and flips a stack of paper from in front of him to land on top of my notes. A blue sticky note, written in too feminine of a style to belong to any of the guys, says, “Not worth translating. Completely fake.” Fake is underlined twice. Great. Whoever this lady is who thinks she knows everything about hieroglyphs and Egyptian mythology needs to come hang out with Timothy for a few days. Thanks for the help.
“Great, so we’re stuck?”
Waving off my disappointment, Kyran says, “Never mind that. It was basically the same as what Timothy told you. Malachi, where’s…”
Malachi, not looking up from his own laptop, shoves something else toward me.
“Thanks, man.” He turns to me. “This is way more helpful.”
Shaking off amazement of Kyran and his rapidly developing abilities, I tell myself to focus and look at what Malachi just handed me. It’s an almost full page image. It looks like something I remember seeing in pictures of huge murals on Egyptian temples with smaller sections of hieroglyphs worked in around the larger images. The biggest figure, a woman seems to be standing on or near a river. She’s not wearing the leopard print dress, but the five hieroglyphs I’ve been studying all afternoon are arranged near her head.
Those hieroglyphs are worked in multiple times in other areas, as well. The more carefully I note their presence, the more of a pattern I see. On one side of the large woman are scenes from everyday Egyptian life, farming, working weaving, etc. I don’t know what all the hieroglyphs say, but Seshat, Ka, and the Ankh are mixed in frequently. On the other side of the woman are the same images, but mirrored. So, the afterlife. The Afterworld is mentioned frequently. The Sa, the protection symbol, stays centered with the woman. There are several other hieroglyphs in the boxes of text near the woman, but I don’t know what they mean.
Touching different areas of text near the woman, Kyran says, “This is talking about the journey between life and the afterlife that the Ka has to make. This here, is how dangerous the journey can be, the risk of the Amenti devouring them before they can reach the Hall of Truth.” He points to one other section of text. This is the only section near the woman that includes the Ankh. “This is what we need to learn more about. It says something along the lines of the Caretaker needing to use the Key—which the Ankh is also referred to as the Key of Life—if the Amenti ever escape the Hall of Truth and try to join the free creatures.”
“How?” I demand. “How do I use it?”
All three guys look at me, wishing they had an answer. “We haven’t figured that out yet, but it’s pointing us in the right direction. We’re skimming the end of the book for any mention of the Key and the Amenti together.”
I shove my own research aside. “I’m done with my part. I’ll help you guys skim.”
Holden shrugs and tosses me half his stack. “Dig in.”
How Kyran understands any of this is a mystery to me. The hieroglyphs mean almost nothing as I skim along the lines. All I can do is look for a few key hieroglyphs, highlight them, then pass the page on to Kyran. It’s extremely slow progress. My thoughts begin to wander after ten or fifteen pages and wonder if Griffin has learned anything else about how Lucy jumped into the circle during the séance. Normally that would be more Kyran’s alley, but we can’t spare him. So, Griffin is contacting mediums he’s worked with, or ones his dad has worked with, and getting their opinions. I have half a mind to go see what he’s up to, but I suppose he’ll come find me when he has something useful.
I hand Kyran another sheet of paper, but he pushes it away. “Hold on,” he says.
Curious, I look over at what he’s reviewing. It’s a strange thing to watch him work. There’s no good explanation for what I witness. He drags his pen along under each line of hieroglyphs, pausing to make notes or scratch out a hasty meaning. Notes get scribbled in the margins without him having to consult a chart or diagram. Suddenly, his hand darts over to another paper, his notes, and sketches out some completely new diagram. It’s bizarre and fascinating.
I’m not prepared for him to rip the paper out of my hand and continue right where he left off on the previous page. He doesn’t stop until he gets three quarters of the way through that page, then dr
ops back into his chair. “This is not going to be easy,” he says to no one in particular.
“Of course it’s not,” Malachi grumbles, “but what are you talking about this time?”
Kyran looks up, seeming surprised he’d spoken aloud to begin with. “The ritual. Locking the Devourers back up.”
“You found it?” I demand.
Shaking his head, Kyran isn’t answering a question. He’s clearing his mind. “Sorry, takes me a minute to get out of that headspace.” He breathes out long and slow. “It’s sandwiched in this story about how the Devourers used to run all over the earth—”
“Used to?” Malachi says. He shakes his head.
“It’s weird,” Kyran continues. “It sounds like they used to just be free roaming, but in much smaller numbers. Even then they were a problem. Eventually they got so bad, Osiris had most of them—as many as they could track down—stuffed into this cage in the Hall of Truth to serve as Amenti. It kept them fed, kept them from killing innocent people, and gave a lot of Egyptians reason to fear living a bad life. The story tells how they locked them all up.”
I sag in relief. “How? What do I have to do?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
Why does that not surprise me? I’ve yet to like a single part of all this. Bracing myself for the worst, I say, “Doesn’t matter. Tell me.”
Kyran hesitates a moment, but has no other recourse but to tell me. “Mr. Bridger was right. Timothy has to be in the spirit realm with the Feather of Truth and you need to be here with the Key of Life. That’s the easy part.”
“What exactly do we do with the Feather and Key?” I ask.
Leaning against the chair back, Kyran seems to mentally prepare himself for his explanation. That can’t be a good sign. “For Timothy, he has to be at the gate to the Field of Reeds, where the spirits cross though to get on the ferry, and he has to use the feather to write the forty-two negative confessions on the gate door.”
“The forty-two what?” Malachi asks.
“Negative confessions,” I tell him. I remember them being discussed early on, but hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to them. I knew the basic idea, though. “Instead of saying you were a great person, you have to make these statements that say you didn’t do certain bad things, like you haven’t stolen things or killed people or slept with your neighbor’s wife or whatever.” I turn back to Kyran, curious. “What do those have to do with anything?”
His brow wrinkles in thought. “The best I can figure is that it somehow purifies the Hall of Truth and allows the judges to take back power from the Amenti, or Devourers.”
“How did they lose power to them in the first place?”
Kyran’s head falls back against the chair. “The closest thing to an explanation for that is this vague mention of needing to keep the balance of good and evil in the Hall of Truth. I’m guessing that means, you feed the evil beasts in the basement too much and they eventually get more powerful than you can handle.”
“So the world really is getting more evil?” Holden says, then rolls his eyes. “Come on, society as a whole is much more civilized than even just a hundred years ago. Yes, there are a few outliers like Hitler or Mussolini, but as a whole we’re moving toward equality and fairness and better awareness and concern about social and environmental issues. I just don’t buy that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket.”
Who knew Holden is such an optimist?
Running his hand through his hair, Kyran closes his eyes. “I agree, but over time the Devourers were eventually going to gain enough power to break free even just from consuming the random evil soul here and there. How long have they been locked up? Centuries? Millennia? I don’t know. Long enough to break out, I guess.”
“So we’re going to have to do this again?” I whine. If they break lose again, I hope it’s long after I’m gone and the next ghost girl-Caretaker-medium-whatever gets saddled with rounding them back up.
Malachi makes a “hmm” sound, drawing everyone’s attention. “I think there’s more to it than that. I think Lucy Coulter is connected to all of this. The odds of both these insane problems coming at us at the same time…no, there’s a connection.”
“Like what?” Holden asks, clearly intrigued.
Frowns deepen on all the guy’s faces. Malachi is the first to speak. “We’re pretty sure the Devourers are recruiting, right?” Everyone nods. “What if they’re not just recruiting new members? What if they’re also recruiting dinner for their buddies locked up in the spirit realm?”
For along moment, no one says anything.
“That makes sense,” I say. “Maybe over time power gained from consumed souls fades in the Devourers, but give them a whole bunch all at once and suddenly you’ve got super beasts on your hands and you can’t stop them from busting out.”
Everyone seems to agree it follows logic, but we’ve still got plenty of other problems to consider. Malachi brings up the next most pressing. “After Timothy purifies the Hall of Truth, how do we get the Devourers to go back in there?”
Kyran’s expression hardens. “With bait.”
“Not Timothy!” I say. They’ll have to find someone else to fix their mess—whoever the hell they are, anyway. They’re crazy if they think we’re sending a six-year-old boy up against a horde of soul-eating monsters.
“Not Timothy,” Kyran reassures, “but one of the souls who’s already been judged. He’ll have to release one of them and use it as bait.”
I shake my head. “They’ll kill it. You know they will.”
He nods. “I don’t think there’s any other way.”
Logic says he’s right. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure one soul will even be enough. The Devourers are hell bent on getting back to the living world. My stomach turns as I consider how many souls it will take to draw them back into their prison. Malachi will likely have to help, if there’s anything he can even do. I have no clue how he created the shield that protected us from the power of Mr. Bridger’s soul bomb. Hopefully he’s got a few other tricks up his sleeve.
“What’s my part?” I ask, already dreading the answer.
Kyran looks as though he is too. “The Key works as a container. You have to put memories into it, while here in the living world, then carry those memories into the afterworld and use the Key to lock the gate once the Devourers are inside the Hall of Truth.”
Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. That makes my eyes narrow. There’s something Kyran’s not telling me. I takes me a moment to guess at what that might be. “Whose memories?” I demand.
If it were just my own memories, or memories from my friends, that would be simple. Maybe. I’m not exactly sure how I’m supposed to put memories into a stone Ankh, but that’s not the biggest problem right now. The answer to my question is, and Kyran doesn’t look as though he wants to give it up.
What choice does he have, though? His shoulders drop. “Memories from spirits, the ones who can’t face judgment yet.”
“The ghosts?” I shriek. “I have to get the memories from ghosts? After what just happened with Noel and Lucy Coulter, I’m supposed to attempt talking to ghosts again? They’re just as likely to kill me as help me at this point. They’ve all been avoiding me like a spiritual plague since Noel was destroyed. I can’t talk to the ghosts!”
My panic and yelling draws Zara and Griffin from the living room. Both seem to have heard enough not to ask what’s going on. “What kind of memories?” Zara asks.
“Good memories, ones that would make a person worthy of going into the Field of Reeds.”
Zara seems hopeful at that. “Maybe if the ghosts know what it’s for and that it won’t hurt them, they’ll be willing to help.”
I see Kyran flinch from the corner of my eye and my faint hopes sink. “What happens to the memories I take?”
“They won’t get them back,” he says with a sigh.
That is fantastic. “So you want me to enlist the help of troubled ghost
s, who can’t move on because of some guilt or shame or unresolved business, and take away their few good memories…so they’re most likely even more stuck here and a few steps closer to becoming vengeful spirits?” I throw up my hands. Risking my own safety and sanity isn’t enough. I also have to ruin the afterlives of the ghosts around me.
Kyran shrugs, defeated. I know none of this is his fault. He’s just the messenger in this. Not lashing out at him isn’t easy. I’m furious with whoever’s stupid idea this is, furious at the Devourers for pushing things to this point, furious at the Key for requiring such an awful sacrifice, and furious at myself for the pain I know I’m going to be forced to cause.
If I want to save the spirit realm, I have to put the living world at risk.
34: In His Care
(Echo)
I can’t keep him awake much longer.
I stare at the text, terrified, wanting more time but knowing we don’t have any. Griffin reads the text over my shoulder and exhales. He does what I don’t want to do, and updates everyone else. “Time’s up. Timothy is too exhausted to stay awake much longer.”
Kyran looks up from where he’s redoing the circle of protection on the living room floor and locks gazes with me. Despite his confidence in my abilities, he’s scared. Everyone is scared. Malachi stalks up to me, anxiously balling his hands into fists. “I don’t like not knowing what’s going on here with you. I know Timothy needs protection but it feels wrong to leave you for him.”
“I’ll be fine,” I lie.
No one has brought up the fact that me talking to ghosts invites all kinds of problems, least of which is being bombarded by everyone who has a message to pass on…most of which is Lucy Coulter showing up to help her new buddies destroy the world. They all know the risks. We’ve all just made a silent agreement to pretend they don’t exist for the sake of our collective sanity.
The Ghost Host: Episode 2 (The Ghost Host Series) Page 29
