The Amulet (3 page)

The last was said directly to Johnson, and I saw something shift in the big man's eyes-something that looked like hope.

The Arab took Johnson by the arm and led him off, straight to the correct tent. That was when my suspicions were first raised.

Young Campbell looked at me, and again I shrugged.

"The last thing he needs is more drink," I said, "But if it keeps him off my back, then let him have it. And talking of drink, I need that water now."

Ten minutes later we were back at the cutting. Johnson hadn't emerged from his tent, and there was still no sign of him some three hours later when Campbell and I called it a day.

It was not until nearly sundown that I saw him again. I was on my second cigar, and third gin. The temperature had started to fall, the flies had stopped swarming, and I had changed into a clean suit of crisp linen. Life was almost bearable for a short while. Then Johnson walked past my tent.

He had the distracted air of a man deep in thought, and would have kept on walking if I hadn't hailed him. His hair was back to its usual sleek glory, and his eyes were clear again. Whatever he had spent the afternoon doing, I doubted if there had been any alcohol involved.

"Oh, hello Dunlop," he said, as if it was a surprise to him that I should be in my own tent. "I was just taking the air."

I invited him inside and offered him a drink and a cigar. He took the cigar, but turned down the gin.

"I'm afraid I over-indulged myself last night," he said sheepishly, "Trying to drown my sorrows-all I did was give them a swim."

I laughed, but his eyes stayed serious.

"And what about the old Arab? Did he have anything for you?" I asked.

I saw him take some time deliberating on his answer.

"No. Just another desert chancer trying to make some money from the rich foreigners," he said, but he wasn't a good liar.

"And don't worry about last night's row," he said to me. "I'm sure the finds will come in time."

He turned and left, and I went to find young Campbell.

The lad was in his tent, still poring over some of the day's tablets.

"I believe we're getting closer," he said as I entered. "This tablet tells of numbers of servants buried with a great king, and details their families and their worth."

That was very good news, but I was more worried about Johnson's behavior.

"Leave that alone for a minute," I said. "I want you to go and check on the munitions."

"It's Johnson, isn't it?" he said. "He's been talking of little else these past few days."

I nodded.

"He'll know I suspect something if he sees me going near the dynamite. Just make sure that the explosives are out of harms way and come back straight away," I said. "I'm going to have a long talk with him in the morning. We may need his money, but we don't need it that much."

Campbell dropped a mock-military salute and left.

While he was gone I checked the tablet he was working on. The lad had been right. This was proof that we were in the vicinity of an important burial. I felt my heart beat just a little bit faster as I read on.

And that's when the blast tore through the night air. I almost fell from the shock of it, and was on my way out towards the cutting before the ringing had left my ears.

I found Campbell on the ground close to where we'd been working that day. He was carrying an oil lantern that spluttered and almost went out as I lifted it from his hand, then strengthened again as I bent to check on him. There was an egg-sized bruise just above his ear, but he was breathing steadily, although out cold.

Inside the cutting, sand and dust began to settle. I could just see that the blast had ripped a hole in the dig, a deep yawning blackness that stretched down and into the depths of the dune.

I was torn between helping the lad and following Johnson into the hole. I'd actually chosen to stay with the lad when his eyelids fluttered and he looked up at me. He grabbed my arm, tight.

"You must stop him," he whispered, his voice throaty. He'll destroy the site."

He tried to stand, but dizziness forced him back to his knees. He pushed me away from him.

"Go, and please stop him. I'll be all right."

I didn't need any more prompting. I went down into the dune.

My lantern was barely strong enough to pierce the dust that still hung ahead of me, but there were two sets of footprints on the floor of the passageway. By crouching and holding the lantern close to the ground I was able to follow them downwards.

After ten yards the dust was less dense in the air. I was able to see that the walls to either side of me were no longer just compacted sand; they were stone blocks. We had been close.

Part of me wanted to tarry, to pore over the pictographs that covered the walls, but the sound of a deep chanting from below forced me to carry on downwards. The air got colder, and increasingly more stale and musty. And still the chanting got louder. A chill ran up my spine, and I don't think it was from the cold.

* * *

I woke with a start, knocking my ashtray over onto the carpet. It was just after 11:00 p.m. and the room sat in pitch darkness. I rose from the chair, and bent to lift the ashtray. And that's when the creaky floorboard in my bedroom groaned as someone stepped on it.

I stood still, but the noise wasn't repeated. I stepped over to the door and put my hand on the handle...just as it turned from the other side.

I stopped and held my breath.

From far away I heard chanting, a guttural drone that shook through my body as if I stood too close to a bass speaker at a concert. The brass handle went cold in my palm, and when I did finally breathe mist formed in the air ahead of me.

Thud! Something heavy struck the door, then another, shaking the wood in its frame.

"I've called the police," I shouted, realizing even as I said it how lame it sounded.

The door shook once more.

All went silent.

The door handle suddenly felt warm, and I knew, I don't know how, that the room beyond was empty. I turned the handle and stepped inside.

I almost gagged at the stench. My nose told me that something had died, and not too recently, but by the time I reached the window the smell had already faded.

A quick visual tour of the room told me what I knew-it was empty. I tried to open the window, and found it to be locked from the inside. I didn't know whether to be happy about that or not. After I opened it I stood at the open window and gulped air until my heart slowed.

By the time I stepped back into the living room, I had almost written the experience off as a waking dream brought about by my night's reading.

Almost, but not enough to allow me to go back into the bedroom.

I filled a glass with whisky, lit a cigarette, and went back to Dunlop's story. To start with, I had one ear on any noise, and when a car alarm went off outside I must have jumped nearly a foot. But the story had me gripped, and it wasn't long until it took me away once more.

* * *

The chanting got louder still, and part of me wanted to turn and flee, to get back to my tent and my gin. But the thought of what might await, and what damage Johnson might do before we could catalogue it properly, drove me onwards. I rounded a corner and found myself confronted with a nightmare.

A sarcophagus had been thrown to the floor, its contents broken and strewn across a wide space. I groaned when I saw the bones mingled with the remnants of clothing and binding-a priceless artifact had already been destroyed.

Johnson was on his knees, holding something small and misshapen in front of him, as if in supplication. The old Arab stood above him, his arms flung wide as he sang his chants into the echoing chamber.

Echoes and shadows ran in the space of their own accord. Statues of great serpents writhed in a crude semblance of life. I felt that if I only once averted my eyes, then dark things would pounce on me and devour me utterly.

The chanting got more strident, deeper and resonant. The thing in Johnson's hands began to glow, at first dimly, like a luminescent moss. Then the light flared between his fingers, so much that I could see his bones through them. The light grew steadily brighter until the sickly green glow it cast was stronger than that of my lantern. Its baleful glare filled the room.

The Arab took the thing from Johnson, and it was then I noticed it was an amulet, a figurine hanging on a heavy gold chain. The Arab pulled the chain over his head, letting the amulet lie on his chest. Once more he raised his arms. He shouted, just one word, and the very air seemed to darken around him. For a second it seemed that he grew swollen and distended. Snakes seemed to writhe in the shadows cast round him, but when he dropped his arms, he was only an old Arab.

The Arab looked around the room and smiled. His expression was one of triumph. He smiled, nodded, and handed the amulet back to Johnson. As he brushed past me on his way out my skin crawled at his touch, as if I had been in contact with evil incarnate. He merely smiled a crooked-toothed grin at me, a smile that never reached his eyes.

"Well, Dunlop, we have our treasure," Johnson said.

I fought down an urge to punch the man, and hurried to the rest of the sarcophagi. There was much to preserve before the desert air did its work.

* * *

The phone rang, and I jumped. The book dropped to the floor and I soaked my left leg with spilt whisky.

It was my client.

"Mrs. Dunlop. Is something wrong?" I asked.

"I wondered if you had made any progress," she said. This time I didn't need to see her eyes-I heard the lie. She wanted to ask me something else entirely, and my clients were not in the habit of calling me after midnight. I started to pay attention. This case had depths I hadn't started to fathom.

"I've been doing some background work," I said. "I'll know more tomorrow."

"And everything is okay?" she asked. "Nothing out of the ordinary?"

Strangely I thought of the typewriter in my office. She had known of that.

Did she also know about the presence that I had felt in the bedroom?

"No," I said, then a thought struck me. "But if any ancient Arab sorcerers turn up I'll be sure to let you know."

There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the line.

"Tread carefully, Mr. Adams. We'll do what we can to help you, but we're relying on you to find the amulet for us."

"We," I said. "You and Mr. Dunlop?"

She cleared her throat.

"Yes. Arthur is here. I couldn't lie to him, and I told him about the burglary."

Another lie. She was storing them up.

"I'll phone you tomorrow," I said.

"I'll look forward to it," she said, and hung up on me.

After that the book didn't appeal. I turned on the television and watched a very old hospital drama while smoking cigarettes, drinking whisky, and trying not to think about Mrs. Dunlop. After a while the weeping and wailing from the television forced me to get up to turn it off, and I stood by the window, watching the raindrops find their way down the glass and not seeing the life in the city beyond.

* * *

I nearly had a life once. It was back when Doug and I were just getting to know each other, and Liz was still alive.

I was a student-Organic Chemistry and Molecular Biology with a view to majoring in the biochemistry of cancerous cells. I managed to hold down the studies, and had plenty of fun between all the work. Liz and I had met the previous summer...one of those thunderbolt things that blew us both together. We were living together within a week, and had been inseparable ever since. We studied together, discussed our studies together, and partied together.

That all changed during my third year of studies. Although marriage had never been mentioned, we were pretty much a couple, and my old bed was seeing plenty of action. The night my life changed-the 30th of January-started like many others. Doug and I left another dull chemistry lecture and had a few pints in the Student Union. I was several sheets into the wind when I got back to the flat, and that was always a recipe for disaster.

She wanted to talk, I didn't want to listen, and a blazing row ended as it usually did...I slammed the door behind me as I went back to the bar.

I got involved in a darts match against a team from Edinburgh University, and I was having fun, even although I was so bad at the game that I was the one who ended up buying most of the drinks. At some point in the evening the barman called me over and offered me the phone handset.

"It's your girlfriend," he said. "She says she needs you right now."

The drink had spoken for me.

"Tell her she needs her head examined. I'll be back when I'm good and ready."

And so help me, I'd enjoyed myself. While she sat in an empty flat and decided on the future course of our lives, I enjoyed myself. I drank a lot of beer, I sang bawdy songs about the Mayor of Bayswater's daughter-and the hairs on her dickie-die-doh-and only have a vague memory of getting back to the flat.

I'll never forget the next hour, though.

I wandered into the kitchen, bumping into tables and knocking over chairs. That took a minute.

I put on the kettle, and stood beside it while it boiled. That took three minutes.

I took the coffee into the front room and watched the end of the late night news. Ten minutes.

The beer told my bladder it needed to get out. I put down my coffee and got out of the chair-slowly-I wasn't very steady. One minute.

She was in the bath, and she had used my razor on her wrists, her ankles and her throat. She hadn't wanted to make any mistakes. This wasn't a cry for help-she'd tried that earlier and I hadn't answered. For the past fifteen minutes she'd been dying.

By the time the police arrived I was nearly sober, but after they found her note and showed it to me, I got drunk again quickly. She had been three months pregnant.

Doug took me in that night. It was he who cleared out the flat and got me somewhere new to live, and it was he I leaned on through the funeral as I tried to avoid the tear-stained eyes of Liz's family. But he couldn't persuade me to stay on in my studies.