Friday Nightmares

by Corey Edward

  “So,” I said. “Is everybody ready? This could be a long night.”

  “I’m more than ready,” said Molly.

  “Same,” said Enisa. “We’re going to stop this thing. It’s up to us now.”

  “Right. To the museum, Henry,” Frankie exclaimed. “And step on it.”

  So I did.

  Twelve

  Like An Egyptian

  During the day, the Boston Museum of Ancient History was an inviting place that beckoned onlookers to discover the mysteries hidden away inside its walls. At night, it transformed into an imposing fortress that screamed for those same people to stay away — or else. Even Rusty felt wary as we crept up to the edges of the parking lot, doing our best to remain unseen.

  “So this is it,” muttered Frankie. “Looks creepy. Now I know why I never go.”

  “You never go because you hate history,” said Enisa. “Henry, how’re we going to sneak in there without getting caught? The place is probably covered with cameras and alarms.”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” I said. I reached into my bag and pulled out a little brown box. I almost opened it up, but decided to offer an explanation to them first so as to prepare them for what was inside. “In this box, I have something called a Hand of Glory.”

  “A hand?” Frankie said. “Like… an actual hand from a real-life man?”

  “No. An actual hand from a real dead man.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding,” said Enisa.

  “I’m not. It’s the mummified hand of a man who was killed long ago in a hanging. And it has powerful magical properties.”

  “Where on Earth did you get one of those?”

  “Walmart, probably,” said Frankie. “They sell everything, bro.”

  “My dad had a few of them in the storage closet at the office. It’s often used by thieves and spies so they can remain hidden during a job. Once you light the wicks on each of its fingers, you’ll evade detection from any mortal, Spellcrafter, or Darkon so long as you stand in the light cast by its glow. If anyone takes even one step out of the range of its light or the candle goes out, we’ll all become visible. That includes you, Rusty. Everyone got it?”

  “Got it,” Molly said. “As gross as it is.”

  “Good.” I opened the box and withdrew the gnarled, browned hand. It was hard to the touch, being mummified, and almost felt artificial. There wasn’t a stench, but it was still a bit nasty. “Anyone want to carry this guy for me? I might need my hands to cast a spell.”

  Silence. That part didn’t surprise me.

  “I totally would, Henry, but, uh… my own hands are tied with the Shades,” said Frankie.

  “The… Shades?” I repeated.

  “That’s what I’m calling these bad boys.” He moved aside his flannel to reveal the shears he’d used to combat the Predator, hooked to the loop of his belt. “And you can call me Frankie the Darkon Slayer. I may not be a blonde chick, but I am a badass Japanese dude.”

  “Okay, then. Any other takers?”

  “Ugh, fine. I’ll do it,” said Enisa. “Gross.”

  “Thanks.” I handed it off to her and she made a face as if she were eating sour lemons. Then I cupped my hands around the wicks on top of the fingers. “I’ll light it up, then. Three, two… Illuminarius.”

  The wicks on top of the fingers sprang into fire, glowing an eerie, supernatural green. The illumination cast by its flickering flames were able to touch each of us, so longer as we stayed close. Hopefully, my friends would remember that fact.

  “Now that it’s settled. How are we getting in?” asked Fankie.

  “The easiest way for us to get in is probably going to be through the maintenance entrance,” I said. “That’s out back there where the truck is parked. As far as I know, there’s only two security guards on duty and neither of them are anywhere near there. I can put them to sleep if they give us any trouble.”

  “And you know where Carter’s office is, correct?” asked Enisa.

  I nodded. “Fifth floor, five twenty one. Everyone remember to stick behind me. Anything goes wrong, I’ll pull my wizard card.”

  We moved toward the rear of the building, walking swiftly and quietly. The Hand was already burning. This would have to be an in-and-out operation with no time to spare.

  That foreboding, gut-clenching sensation that I felt upon catching my first glimpse of the museum grew stronger the closer we crept. The building itself was a living entity that had set up a trap for us. We were unwelcome guests, and it knew it, too.

  The back door was marked with a sign that read MUSEUM EMPLOYEES ONLY. But signs — and locks — were no problem when you had magic on your side. I placed my hand over the knob and muttered “Ultra obfirmio,” the unlocking charm Dad taught me. Not only did it swing open, but it also had the added effect of disabling whatever alarm might’ve been on.

  “Easy as pie,” I whispered, and Frankie grunted in approval. We were in a maintenance hallway with a concrete floor and a humming boiler room nearby. The lights were off, but the Hand shone brightly enough that we didn’t need them. There was an elevator catty-corner to the entrance, but I didn’t know if it would truly be safe to take.

  “The elevator would probably be the easiest route up to the fifth floor,” I whispered to my friends. “But it’s also the riskiest. It could open right in the face of one of the guards.”

  “Or something worse,” Molly agreed. “Let’s stick to the stairs.”

  I nodded and inched forward, headed for the stairwell at the other end of the museum. I was in front while Molly, Enisa, and Frankie were in the middle, and Rusty took up the rear. Watching the pug as he did his best to walk silently was something else. But hey, at least he was trying.

  We moved down the hallway and into a wide-open area with a domed glass ceiling and dozens of artifacts from Ancient Egypt. As a kid, I would’ve lived for this section of the museum. I knew every last line of The Mummy to this date and could recite the famous myth of Osiris almost verbatim. In the dark of the night, however, the statues of long lost gods and heroes gave me the creeps.

  Blocking our path to the stairs was a ten-foot-tall statue of Anubis, jackal-headed god of the dead, the scales of justice clasped in his hands. We moved around it and I looked up into his face, wondering for a second whether he and his kin had ever truly existed at all — and if they did, how it felt to be so forgotten by the modern world.

  We walked beneath a wall-length mural of the gods and goddesses resting along the banks of the Nile, pressing as close to the wall as we could possibly get. In the center of the room, I noticed, was a black sarcophagus. This struck me as odd, as I had never seen one that wasn’t gold. I didn’t put much thought into it, however. The Hand flickered, and I wondered for one frightening second what would happen if it suddenly just went out.

  A shudder climbed from the nape of my neck all the way down my back. Not a good sign. The last time that happened, I almost got eaten by a Predator.

  I turned my head, ready to come face-to-face with a Darkon.

  But what I saw was much stranger.

  When we had walked past the statue of Anubis, its head was facing directly ahead, staring lifelessly at the wall. Now the head was facing us, staring blankly as if it had followed our trail as we moved. No sooner did I notice this than I started to question myself: had I only imagined it was looking ahead, to begin with? Or was I misremembering due to stress or nerves?

  “You guys,” I whispered. “Take a look at that statue of Anubis, the one we just walked by. Does it look different to you?”

  “What?” Enisa asked.

  “Different how?” Frankie asked, turning around.

  “It was facing ahead before. Now, it’s looking right at us. Check it out.”

  “Huh?” Frankie frowned at the statue. “Can’t tell. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “I swear it changed.”

  “Are you sure the Hand is working?” asked Molly.

  “Posit
ive.”

  “How do you know?”

  “If it wasn’t, we would’ve set the motion alarms off.”

  The only other possibility — that the supposedly inanimate statue somehow saw us even though we were hidden by the Hand — was too spooky for me to consider. I just wanted to focus on getting to Carter’s office, and then I could breathe.

  How strange that a place of learning could be turned into a place of fear just because the lights were out. There was something psychological there, something you could write a paper about, but I didn’t know what. I wasn’t convinced I had just imagined the entire statue thing and was relieved when we climbed the stairs.

  My relief was short and so was my breath. By the time we finished climbing four flights of giant stairs and reached the corridor where Carter’s office could be found, I was panting. Rusty wasn’t in any better shape. He looked about ready to fall over and die.

  “Made it, at last, Rusty Dusty,” I said. “No more climbing. No more stairs. And maybe no more pancakes for a while.”

  But I didn’t find any comfort on the fifth floor. In fact, the narrow corridor was almost worse than the wide-open atrium: the darkness made it look like the throat of some great beast waiting to swallow us whole. I was suddenly more aware of the abstract artwork lining the walls than the last time I was here; were they different?

  No wonder Rusty was such a scaredy pug. He learned from the best.

  As much as I hated being the leader, I didn’t have much of a choice. I moved to the front and made my way down the hall to Carter’s room, following the path I’d taken a few days prior. I paid close attention to the paintings this time, which seemed to become weirder and more abstract as the hallway drew on. At first, they were typical abstract artsy fair: mismatched lines and shapes dancing against white canvas splashed with color. And then they became… strange. Spots of blue became splotches of bloody scarlet. Green squares turned to upside-down black triangles. As I passed, I swear I could see what appeared to be poorly-disguised Sigils mixed in with the other shapes.

  521 was Carter’s room, the door closed and the lights off. The painting across the hall from his closed door was distinctly different from the rest. It wasn’t a work of abstract art, but a photo-realistic depiction of some sort of black entity that was half-mouth, half-legs. Its maw was filled with teeth, row upon row of them, and it had no other features. The sight of the thing filled me with a deep, ominous dread I hadn’t felt since my encounter with the Predator.

  “Wait,” I said. “That wasn’t there earlier.”

  “What wasn’t?” Frankie asked.

  “This painting. It wasn’t there the other day. I mean… what even is that thing?”

  “That’s a Biter,” Molly said, as simply as if she were telling me it was a bird. “A species of Darkon. They can chew through a human’s spine like it’s made of paper.”

  Great Merlin. “Why is something like that hanging here?”

  She shrugged. “Bad taste? Darkon fetish? Who knows?”

  I realized she wasn’t getting my point, so I abandoned it and moved to the door. I opened it with the same unlocking spell I’d used to enter the museum in the first place. Then I wrapped my fist around the knob and yanked the door open, but an invisible barrier prevented me from stepping inside.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Enisa.

  “He put up some kind of protective barrier,” I said. “It’s like a wall.”

  “Well, can you get rid of it?”

  “Maybe.” It was no parlor trick. The wall was so sturdy that not even a wrecking ball could break it down. “I have to figure out the cause before I can neutralize it, though.”

  I peered into the darkened room. Nothing major had changed since I’d been there last with one big exception. Last time, Carter had hung Sigils for protection all over his office. There were at least five or six that I’d seen; maybe even more. Now, however, barely even a single square foot of the wall had been spared. Looked like Carter had gotten even more paranoid over the last 48 hours.

  I saw the Sigil for the barrier spell up on the wall, right beside a bookshelf. The biggest error he’d made, however, was that this was only a barrier that protected against mortal intrusion.

  Not pug intrusion.

  “Rusty.” I looked down at the pug and he looked back up at me with his beady, black eyes. “That barrier only blocks humans and Spellcrafters from entering the room, not pugs. I want you to go in there and rip down that Sigil to the left of the bookcase, the one with the line down the middle. Got it?”

  Rusty yipped, showing me that he got what I was putting down. He waddled into the office, moved up to the Sigil and looked at it. He looked back at me, seeking my approval, and I nodded. Yes, that’s the one.

  He squatted down as low as he could get, sprung up into the air. However, he came up just short, snapping at the Sigil but failing to reach it as he instead flopped back down onto the ground. He tried again, but it was no use.

  “He can’t get to it,” I said. “What now?”

  “I have an idea,” Molly said, sliding her purse off her arm. “Go on, Saru. Give him a lift, will you?”

  Obediently, the purse flew into the room and lowered itself down onto the ground beside the pug. Rusty hopped inside the large purse, just barely fitting his chubby body inside. The purse then hovered up into the air, ferrying Rusty over to the Sigil, so it was within reach. He grabbed onto it with his teeth and ripped it down, making a big bite mark in the center of the paper.

  “Look at him go,” said Enisa. “What a ham.”

  “He is. What a good boy,” I said to my pug as he hopped back onto the ground. “Saru,

  too. Should be okay now, but let me check.”

  I stuck out my hand to be sure the barrier was gone, too, and then I passed right through into the office. My friends passed through after me, and the lights of the Hand illuminated the rest of the office.

  Something was off. Something bad. I knew it in the same way I knew that Grams’s pancakes will always be there for me on Sunday morning. I just needed to find out how deep the problem went.

  “What exactly are we looking for here?” Enisa asked.

  “Ideally, we’re looking for the Grimoire,” I said. “That’s the goal. But first, we need to find evidence of what Carter is planning.”

  I walked over to his desk, which was piled high with stacks of paper and strewn with documents. Beautiful. Finding anything relevant in such an unorganized disaster would be like finding a pin on Mount Everest.

  “And I thought my desk was messy,” muttered Molly. “Looks like he hasn’t cleaned this bad boy since nineteen-ninety.”

  “Clutter without reflects clutter within,” I replied. “That’s what my grandma always says.”

  “That’s a sweet way to call someone batshit crazy,” said Frankie. “Typical Grams.”

  I sifted through folders on his desk, most of which were completely irrelevant to the case at hand. I pulled out a drawer and that’s when I saw a manilla envelope with a mysterious word accompanied by a not-so-mysterious symbol: an ouroboros.

  I picked up the folder and flashed it at my friends.

  “NARLOTHOTEP,” I read aloud. “Sounds like we have a hit.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about evil entities,” said Molly, “it’s the more syllables it has, the more likely it is to want to eat your face off.”

  “Evil beings sure love their vowels.”

  Something about the title sparked familiarity even though I was fairly sure I’d never seen that word before. Maybe it was something I’d seen in passing? Or perhaps I had read it in some spell book on my father’s shelf.

  Then I remembered something.

  Three letters.

  T-E-P.

  “When my dad was murdered,” I said, “he was found holding a piece of paper with three letters on it. T-E-P. Nobody knew what it meant or why. Maybe — just maybe — he was talking about Narlothotep. Ending in T-E-P.
”

  “Only one way to find out,” said Enisa. “Start reading. And hurry; this thing is starting to ooze dead guy all over my hand.”

  I reached into the file and pulled out a bundle of handwritten pages, notes, and pictures. As soon as I saw the first photograph of what was clearly the interior of an ancient Egyptian tomb tumble out, I knew I had chosen the right one.

  “It’s a travelogue from earlier this year,” I said after scanning it for a few seconds. “About his excursion to Egypt.”

  “Just like he was saying at the Coven meeting last night,” said Molly. “There are pictures, too.”

  I nodded, holding up the one that’d fallen out. This was the one which featured a weather-worn tomb whose interior was adorned with hieroglyphics, drawings, and something else I instantly recognized.

  “Those are Sigils,” I exclaimed. “Painted all over the walls of that tomb.”

  “Yes, they are,” agreed Molly. “Does it say anything about whose tomb it is?”

  “Pharaoh Senebkay,” I read. “I remember learning about him from Mrs. Meyer’s class last year. Not much is known about his rule. In fact, many doubted that his dynasty existed.”

  “Was he a Spellcrafter, then?” asked Enisa, squinting down at the pictures.

  “Looks like it.” I set that one down and picked up a postcard. It featured a large, sandy mountain, with golden gateways set against the side. “It says ‘The Valley of Anubis.” That must’ve been where he was digging.”

  I picked up one of the papers that’d fallen out. This one was written in Carter’s own hand, his writing shaky and excited – possibly about his findings.

  “This is the discovery of a lifetime,” I read. “The long-lost Abydos dynasty is made up of Spellcrafters. I cannot wait to share the details of this with my crew. Note the three gates: one for Pharaoh Senebkay, one for Pharaoh Sobekhotep, and another for the Pharaoh Narlothotep, otherwise known as the ‘Black Pharaoh’ and last of the Abydos line…”

  “Narlothotep,” repeated Enisa. “There’s our guy.”