Another Pan (36 page)

And so, Marcus Praxis was gone, his rightful place in history lost. But he can never fully die. His wasted life is forever trapped as grains of immortality in his bones
.

Peter tossed and turned, twisting his blanket around himself, sweating through his pillow all the way to the scratchy feathers inside. He was in a barely furnished room, in a strange house that the LBs had found for him — someone’s attic outside Manhattan. The nightmares were unbearable now. His demons would not leave him alone. The night would never end. He had barely slept in days. Still, the desperation for bonedust drove him onward.

He thrashed in his bed and kicked away his blanket. The book would soon slip away from him. It would be moved to Albany, and he would have to start all over again. It was already so much harder getting close to the exhibit since his firing from Marlowe. Now he would have to move fast. “Don’t worry — I always think of something,” he had said to Wendy only hours ago, when they met in secret. But now that he was alone, he wasn’t so sure his plan would work. Time was running out. And yet the night . . . it was unending.

Peter buried his face in his scratchy pillow and turned his thoughts to Wendy. He smirked at the thought of Connor trying to beat him up over her, the memory of Tina fuming with jealousy when she saw them together. He liked being with Wendy, especially now that her father had expressly forbidden it. Then he remembered how Wendy had hesitated, how she had shown no trace of happiness, when he had offered her the world. . . .

Professor Darling had researched the
Book of Gates
and its surrounding mythology for years. He had read books, written books, given speeches, and been laughed out of half the lecture halls in Europe and the U.S. for trying to further his theories on the veracity of “the five myths.” The fact that this formerly legendary, now defunct professor had gotten his hands on such an important collection of ancient artifacts did not escape the attention of the academic world. Yes, Darling was still perusing the items for clues about five absurd myths. Yes, his motives were still frivolous and questionable. But no one could deny that his exhibit was an achievement for the community. So, of course, they wanted to recognize him for his efforts — even if only to give the governor a photo op.

Shortly after the unveiling of the exhibit, Professor Darling had received phone calls from Egyptologists all over New York. One of them had come to see the exhibit for himself. Others had simply sent their regards and moved on. A small news piece had been written about the exhibit, followed by another about Darling’s career. When the article had reached the hands of the alumni association at Darling’s alma mater and was published in the alumni magazine, it gained a much more privileged readership, including New York’s governor, who had attended the college some years after Professor Darling and whose current education-focused campaign was sorely in need of a media boost. Professor Darling was informed that he would be given a gubernatorial prize at a special gala in honor of his contributions to the education of New York’s youth.

Professor Darling hated to say good-bye to the
Book of Gates
. But the old man knew when it was time to let go. And by now, he was convinced that it was no more than a copy. Since the exhibit had come to Marlowe, Professor Darling had gone to work trying to figure out which item could possibly unlock the mysteries of the legends. Could it be the almost female death god statue — so lifelike, so intrinsically tied to the underworld narrative? Could it be one of the several canopic jars — built to hold human remains and therefore the natural vessels for the mythic remains of the cursed family? Or, he had often asked himself, could it be the
Book of Gates
itself? Professor Darling, though he was a seasoned scholar, had lost the vigor and patience of the youthful researcher. He didn’t read every footnote. He didn’t follow every lead. He didn’t dig in the back rows of the obscurest libraries or bother with the giant creaking wheel that moves the stacks back and forth to reveal the most rarely touched volumes. So, by the time Peter and the kids had found three of the bones, Professor Darling was still grappling with the question of what
form
this unlocking of secrets would take. Was the underworld a metaphor for a place on earth? Were the mummies in another country? Would the key to finding them be a map of some kind? Early on, he focused his research on the statue labeled
Neferat
— the strange female figure that could be the death goddess from the legends — deciding after many perusals that there was nothing to be found in the book, which was, at best, an ancient copy of the legendary original.

In this mistaken notion, Simon played no small part. He subtly encouraged all of Professor Darling’s false assumptions.

“Yeah, that book came to us at the British Museum a couple of years ago. I think from Rome,” he said one day, keeping a very casual tone as he flipped through the pages, his heart pounding with greed. “Or was it a Spanish copy? Yes, it was the Prado in Madrid.”

Then, on another occasion he remarked, as he placed a small cracked bowl behind a placard, “The book was marked for permanent storage a few months ago. It was spared because the papyrus is in pretty good condition.”

“Oh, is that old thing still here?” he said one afternoon as they were wrapping up for the day. “I read a paper in the Cairo Museum archives about the original being tracked to somewhere outside Alexandria.”

Each time Simon made one of these comments, Darling would sigh and resign himself to the fact that his mission was proving to be a failure.

And yet Professor Darling’s mind was troubled by more than just a failed theory. He had noticed a strange aura all around Marlowe. A weird presence seemed to inhabit the school, lingering just around his exhibit — possibly even making people sick. Maybe it was asbestos or dust or lead, but the new nurse was practically tubercular. She should really quit. And yesterday, as he was packing up for the day, he thought he heard a raspy groan, a muffled murmur, coming from one of the locked classrooms. . . .

Despite Wendy’s nine hours a day spent in the pristine classrooms of Marlowe, despite a lifetime of mandatory birthday parties at the lush homes of her Upper East Side classmates, and despite all the years of tiptoeing around a borrowed house far above her family’s means, the lobby of the Four Seasons made her stop and stare. Though the room was bustling, the sound of Wendy’s shoes echoed through the vast space as her soles tapped a nervous rhythm across the chocolate-and-cream marble floor. Wendy ran her fingers along one of the massive ivory-colored columns, then followed John and her father inside, where a sign directed them to the reception. Wendy could see that her father was nervous. He almost bumped into a table holding a vase so huge that it towered above them, bursting with hundreds of blossoms in burnt shades.