Sphinx (61 page)

I shouted her name and leaped to my feet, determined this time to rescue her, to put right the tragedy of her death. This time our lives would play out in the way they had been meant to - our long future together, children, old age. This time she would not have to die. The boat rocked dangerously as I reached out towards those white drifting legs.

‘Isabella, here!’ I shouted.

Amelia wrestled me back down. ‘Shhh. She isn’t real! Oliver!’

I fought her, weeping openly now, wanting to pull my wife’s body to mine, wanting to stop her growing cold. I leaned back over the side; she was still there, white skin flashing like the underbelly of a dead fish. Her lips opened and she mouthed, ‘Help me.’

I struggled to suppress every instinct that told me to dive in. I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, Isabella’s white thighs were caught in a spiral of churning water, the ripple of a crocodile’s tail cutting the surface in a ridge of jagged scales.

‘This isn’t happening, this isn’t real,’ I gasped, panic choking my words. Sweat beaded my forehead and for a moment I thought I might faint. But I held onto my mantra as the wind pushed the felucca across the water to the distant shore.

We were now almost at the centre of the huge pale reflection of the moon. To me, it seemed as though the planet had reached its loudest vibration, buzzing like a thousand cicadas. If anyone was following us they couldn’t miss us here. It was then that I noticed a mist rising off the water at the middle of the glinting mirage. It began to twist like a miniature tornado, gathering shape above the lake as if the moon’s reflection itself was gaining form. The wind blew us straight into the thickening fog and suddenly there was the beating of a million wings all around me, fluttering insects that smashed blindly against my face, in my hair, up my nostrils, suffocating me. They were moths, large white creatures that twisted and swirled into a single massive cloud. The very air seemed to be raining a soft smothering powder as my hands bashed frantically against the velvety bodies, trying to make space in the cloud to breathe. I felt my lungs squeezing against my ribcage, and then Amelia’s arms were around my own, pinning them to my sides.

‘Surrender,’ she said, and the shape of the word descended on me like the moth powder coating my tongue, the inside of my nostrils, my burning eyelids.

We sat there in the strangest of embraces, Amelia behind me, her legs wrapped around my hips, her arms holding my arms, the astrarium between us, while the felucca moved through the frenetic mass of dazed insects flying in chaotic circles as if they themselves were bewildered by their own predicament.

As I made out the shape of the approaching shore, the wings of the insects surrounding us transformed into a harder, brilliant cascade of hues that glittered in the lantern light. I focused my gaze on the creatures hovering just before my nose, their heavy bodies clumsily defying gravity like bumblebees, their translucent wings a whirl of air, and, with a shock, I recognised them - scarab beetles, the sacred manifestation of Ra, signifying rebirth.

The cloud thinned into a column that spiralled and curved in a path to the shoreline. The boat followed and soon its wooden bottom was scraping along the shallow bank of salt crystal.

Before us lay a lunarscape of sand dunes with the distant outline of a mountain squatting on the horizon like a giant in repose. Time stretched like taut wire in the darkness until Amelia’s voice cut the silence like a bell.

‘We are now entering the sandy world of Sokar.’

I couldn’t believe that time had passed so quickly - the distortion of the drugs, I guessed. Just then the sound of an approaching speedboat echoed across the water

‘Quick!’ Amelia said. Grabbing my arm, she helped me out of the boat.

My feet hit a beach made uneven by the drying rock salt and tangled vegetation. The only illumination came from the moonlight and the glistening wings of the scarab beetles as they flew in a zigzagging black-purple snake into the hushed, expectant desert.

Amelia pulled me down behind the cover of some bushes and we watched the dark outline of the approaching boat as it cut across the lake. As we crouched there it was as if the sound of that boat’s engine was my own fear curdling at the base of my spine, threatening to burst at any minute into sheer blank terror.

The boat drew up to the bank and I could just make out the faces of the two men sitting by the motor. One looked Arabic, the other European. Were they Wollington and Mosry? I couldn’t quite make out their features.

‘Wait here!’ Amelia whispered.

Keeping low, still holding the lantern, she ran from bush to bush towards the boat. The sound of a twig breaking made one of the men look over. My stomach tightened in fear. Amelia cupped her hands to her mouth and made the call of a marsh bird - a perfect imitation. I could see the guerrilla fighter emerging from the role of the middle-aged woman that she’d played and I realised the years of experience she’d had fighting in this terrain. The man dropped his gaze and got out of the boat to pull it up onto the crusty salt bank.

I could make out Amelia across the way; she was holding a lighter to the wick of the lantern. In a second it was alight. Silently and accurately, she hurled it into the speedboat. It smashed against the wood and the spilled oil burst into flames, which spread quickly across the hull. In that flash of light, I recognised Hugh Wollington.

Shouting, both men leaped into the lake. Amelia bolted back to me. The boat’s diesel tank exploded and shattered wood rained down around us.

‘Run!’ she ordered.

We sprinted up the beach and into a thicket of thorny shrubs that tore at our skin, Amelia propelling me forward while bullets flew over our heads. It felt like several minutes of battling the dense foliage before a path opened before us. Amelia pointed upwards: etched against the night sky was the column of glistening scarabs. Following them, we climbed higher and higher, pressing our bodies against the rocks to remain out of sight until finally we reached a moon-drenched plateau surrounded by majestic boulders that looked like chess pieces abandoned by a reckless colossus. Above us, the scarab beetles hovered for a moment, then disappeared into the night sky.

In the centre of this clearing stood a huge antelope, its twisting horns piercing the low moon. A falcon perched on its back.

‘Seth in his antelope form and Horus,’ Amelia whispered reverently.

Her voice seemed distorted and when I turned towards her she was unrecognisable. She had grown to over six feet in height, her skin had turned to copper, and her grey hair was now thick, black and reached down beyond her shoulders. She wore a headdress of cow horns between which hung a golden disc. I stumbled back, terrified. She had become the goddess Isis. A moment later she switched back to the form I was familiar with, then she was the goddess again. In my hallucinatory state I saw her flickering between the two. She caught my arm just before I fell, dizzy and disorientated.

‘Oliver, stay with me. Stay in the moment.’

We heard our pursuers crashing through the shrubs behind us. Bending its head, the antelope pawed the ground, then turned and cantered up the mountain slope in front of us. The falcon flew ahead.

‘Come on!’ Amelia was instantly after the antelope, clambering up the rocky incline.

I climbed blindly after her, hauling myself higher and higher, tearing the palms of my hands on the jagged stone. Each new plateau accelerated the sense of infinity stretching above and behind me - the huge open cosmos - and I crouched closer and closer to the ground as I climbed, terrified of falling into that void.

As I pulled myself up onto yet another ledge, my foot slipped, dislodging an avalanche of sand. I froze in terror, both hands desperately gripping the rock above me, hanging in mid-air.

‘Haul yourself up - you have to!’ Amelia’s face came over the ledge, one arm extended.

Exhaustion made me panic. I tried to hoist myself up but couldn’t. Hanging there, suspended in the void, I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder. Far below, at the foot of the mountain, the moonlight reflected off the tiled roofs and mud-brick walls of Shali Ghali and I realised we’d climbed far higher than I had imagined. The rush of vertigo almost made me let go. I shut my eyes and prayed, still frozen in the same precarious position.

‘There is no reversal of fortune. You have to get yourself up here!’ Amelia insisted.

With a supreme effort, I pushed down on my right foot and hauled myself up, scrambling and clawing to pull all my body onto the ledge. I lay there panting in the darkness, my heart banging wildly against my chest. I could just make out openings cut into the mountain - burial tunnels. We were climbing Gebel al-Mawta - the Mountain of the Dead - and we were near the top.

In the ensuing silence, punctuated by my short breaths, I could hear the sound of steps, rocks falling. The two men were scrambling up the rock face below us. My limbs felt as if they were moving through treacle, a thousand repetitions of a thousand muscles exploding in effort. My fear had almost transmuted into something else - an ecstasy? Yet part of me was still aware that I was in great danger. I gazed transfixed into the vast cosmos. Could I die now? In some ways it felt as if I had already.

In that second, a bullet whistled past my ear. Amelia pulled me roughly behind a boulder. Lying on her stomach, she returned fire; bullets ricocheted against the flintlike rock, thudding down into the sand. There was a scream as one of the men was hit.

‘Move!’ Amelia grabbed my arm and pushed me towards one of the burial tunnels before following me inside. I crouched against the stone as two more bullets struck near the entrance.

‘Help me!’ Amelia called. ‘We haven’t got long - they’ll be here in seconds!’

She indicated a pile of rocks that looked as if they’d been deliberately stacked on a length of wood beneath them. Together we levered the wood until the rocks fell across the entrance, completely blocking access. Exhausted, I leaned against the cool rock; it smelled faintly of lime. The astrarium was a lead weight across my shoulders.

‘How do we get out?’ I asked.

‘We don’t need to.’

‘But we’ll die in here!’

‘Trust me.’ Amelia dusted off her hands. ‘Come on, we have to keep moving. It’s now hour five - the timing is precise. ’

She pulled out a small torch and switched it on. The walls and ceiling of the tunnel were covered in brightly coloured murals that, in my drugged state, appeared to be moving. Hieroglyphs and drawings telling of the life of Osiris: here, his marriage to Isis; there, Seth murdering him. On the opposite wall was the story of Isis magically piecing together the fourteen parts of her husband’s dismembered body.

Amelia walked in front of me, shining the torch ahead. As I followed her, I could feel the blue lotus pounding through my veins, rippling through my perception. Light glinted off the burnished disc of her headdress and blossoms - poppies, lotuses, lilies - sprang from her feet as she led me deeper into the mountain. Fascinated, I glanced down at my own arms and wondered if I too had metamorphosed. I held my hand up and my fingers danced before me, five, ten, a hundred of them, all moving slowly, as if the air itself had become gelatinous.

We arrived at a thick wooden door carved with a relief of monstrous animals. In front of it sat an old man, his back to us, huddled over.

‘The gatekeeper,’ Amelia murmured, unable to keep the fascination out of her voice.

The old man turned around. To my horror, it was my father, naked, his thin, aged body bent, the wrinkled pouch of his sex hanging from his sagging flesh.

Amelia pressed her gun into my hand. ‘You must kill him.’

‘I can’t,’ I said, terrified.

‘He is not what he appears to be.’

My father whimpered when he saw the gun in my hand. I couldn’t drag my stare away from him. Memories ran through me: the first time we flew a kite together on the Fens, my father showing me how to unreel the string and let the kite catch the wind, his pride as I managed to haul it up high into the air; my astonishment and joy at my graduation when I caught sight of my father’s figure from the podium after he’d sworn he’d sooner see Carlisle United lose than walk into any university; the last time I’d seen him, only weeks ago, standing at his front door, shrunken and vulnerable, wearing my mother’s pink cardigan over his undershirt. I knew that the image before me now was an illusion, but it felt utterly real as I lifted the gun.

The old man cowered, petrified, the whites of his eyes peering out of his dust-covered face. Pleading, he began to claw at my legs, but the sounds that came from his mouth were not human, rather they were the grunts of an animal.

Still I couldn’t bring myself to squeeze the trigger.

‘Shoot!’ Amelia ordered me.

Instead, my arm shaking, I lowered the gun. The creature lunged at me, his hands now reptilian claws, the skin on his wrists darkening and congealing into scales. I smashed the gun against his head, knocking him to the ground, then reeled around, expecting another attack from behind.