The Book of the Dead (11 page)

“I can’t remember the last time I felt this
cold
,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh announced, to no-one in particular. “I’m shivering continually! It’s like my muscles are being twitched by repeated electrical shocks.”

“So many trees!” said el-Akkad. “I sometimes imagine they’re whispering to one another. The forest stretches a thousand miles east from here, you know. Nothing but trees, primordial. It’s not
natural
for humankind to live amongst the trees. Crowding all around – it turns a human being into an interloper in a population of aliens. It’s not
clean
,” he added, with sudden vehemence. “This whole landscape is cluttered and dirty and – ugh!”

They marched on in silence after that. After a while Mohammed Suyuti began what el-Kafir el-Sheikh assumed was a morale-boosting speech. “Do not despair, my friends. The journey is an hour and half by automobile; and so I calculate four or five hours by foot. Six at the most. And we have been on the road two hours already, and have made good progress. Soon we will arrive at our destination.”

“Not yet half way,” grumbled Gurbati.

“I shall flog Bille personally, when we get back,” declared el-Akkad. “What he has done is unforgiveable.”

Nobody had anything to say to this; so they trudged on. Twenty minutes further the road turned right. Round the corner two eyes gleamed at them: the rear lamps of the car.

El-Akkad launched into a run, calling out Bille’s name and adding choice imprecations. But he broke off abruptly, and by the time the others reached him he was standing, his mouth open. Bille was there, in the driving seat, but he was not moving, and his head leant back at a bizarre angle. From the front it was clear his throat had been cut – more than cut, ripped from chin to breastbone. Blood had pooled and congealed in his lap in an oval sheet, and stalactites of red dangled into the footwell.

It was horrible.

Suyuti broke the silence: “at least we won’t have to walk the rest of the way.”

“Did a wild beast do this?” el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked. “Did a
wolf
do this?”

“It if was a wolf why didn’t he finish him off? Or drag him away.”

“Maybe,” said el-Akkad, “the wolf was interrupted. By something worse than a wolf.”

“Whatever happened, it does not make me wish to stand around here,” said Gurbati. “Here, Tawfiq – help me move him. I’ll drive.”

“And put him – where?”

“In the back seat, I suppose.”

“Don’t be absurd!” said Suyuti. “I’m not sitting squashed up against a corpse all the way home.”

“Why did he
stop
?” el-Kafir el-Sheikh wanted to know. “Why not just drive straight through – if it was a wolf, surely you’d try and run it down, not stop and let the beast jump you!”

“Why not read one of your rune tablets,” Gurbati sneered, “and bring him back to life – then you can ask him yourself.”

“That was uncalled-for,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh returned, stiffly.

“We cannot bury him,” said Suyuti. “The tools are back at the dig. And if we just leave him by the road, then wild animals will surely devour his body.”

“Ugh!” el-Akkad cried, recoiling from the car. “His clothes are full of blood.”

“It’s true,” said Gurbati, in a hollow voice, poking a gloved finger at the body. “To touch him is to – it feels, it feels. It is repulsive. It’s like a hot-water-bottle, full of… ugh!”

The four agreed to pitch Bille’s body straight out of the automobile, to lay a coat down where he had been sitting and drive straight off. “It’s unfortunate for Bille,” Suyuti said. “But our hands are tied.” It was not a pleasant business: when el-Kafir el-Sheikh put his hand to the corpse’s shoulder and felt the fluid under the man’s jacket shift and squelch, it took a prodigious effort of will not simply to snatch his hand away again. But with a concerted effort the corpse was pulled over the low windshield and onto the hood, and from there it was an easy-enough business to slide him off onto the turf at the side of the road. Then Gurbati fussed for a while about arranging his coat over the bloodstained seat. But finally they all got into the automobile and started off.

Almost at once it started raining again. “Shall I stop?” Gurbati asked. “We could put up the roof.”

“This shower will pass in a minute,” was Suyuti’s opinion.

“It’s easy for you to say,” Gurbati complained, his teeth clacking. “You’re all still wearing your coats.”

The rain fell steadily, more than drizzle but less than a full shower. El-Kafir el-Sheikh shivered and jerked in his seat. The shower showed no signs of ceasing, and water began filling the front and rear footwells, so Gurbati announced—shouting, to be heard over the downpour—that he was stopping to put up the roof. But no sooner had he done so, and stepped out of the car, than the rain stopped completely.

“Put the roof up anyway,” Suyuti instructed. “Now that we’ve stopped.”

On cue, a wolf’s cry – loud, musical, mournfully sustained but at the same time intensely frightening – sounded in the white air. The fog made it impossible to know whether the beast was far away, or near by. “Get back in the car!” el-Akkad yelled; although Gurbati needed no prompting. He leapt back into the driving seat and started the engine.

They bounced and jarred a half mile or so further on; but when the road curved right Gurbati drove straight on. The passengers all hallooed in fear, and the driver stomped on the brakes, but he wasn’t prompt enough to stop the car colliding with the broad black pillar of a roadside tree. “What are you
playing
at!” Suyuti yelled at him. “You stupid Dom– you’ve crashed us.”

“The wheel is slippy and these gloves don’t
grip
,” Gurbati snapped back.

“Take them off then,” Suyuti ordered him. “Oh, you’ve broken the engine! I just know you have!”

Gurbati pulled the ignition lever, and the engine made a noise like a stick being run along a stretch of palings. But it caught, and came shudderingly to life. Gurbati backed the vehicle up, and hopped out to examine the front bumper. “Banana’d but not broken,” he announced. “Let’s get on. I’ve had enough of this place. Back to the hotel without further prevarication, I say.”

“Gloves off,” Suyuti repeated.

“Easy for you to insist on that,” Gurbati grumbled. “My hands will be carved from ice by the time we get back to the hotel.” But he did remove the gloves.

He took hold of the steering wheel and slowly rolled the car forward and around, until they were back on the road. “Maybe slower but more sure?” he said. “More haste less speed, after all. All.” The car wasn’t moving. “All,” Gurbati said again, in a higher-pitched voice. “All! A-a-a-a-all!”

“What on earth are you gabbling about?” Suyuti called. But Gurbati wasn’t speaking now; it was a cry of sharp pain, a howl. The vowel slid half an octave upwards, and Gurbati started thrashing in his seat, bucking and jerking.

“What’s the matter!” boomed el-Akkad, who was seated beside him. “What? What?”

“Steering!” Gurbati shrieked. “Wheel!”

“His hands are seared to it!” el-Kafir el-Sheikh cried, leaning forward. “Help me –” He and el-Akkad took an arm each, and pulled hard, but it took several tugs before they could dislodge Gurbati’s hands, and they came away in a spray of blood. By then it was too late. Gurbati slumped back, and a horrible, splashy noise replaced his screaming. Red slime spewed down his front. He stopped twitching.

The other three exited the car in a scrabble. The engine throbbed and throbbed, the gears in neutral. Because it seemed like the thing to do, el-Kafir el-Sheikh reached in and turned the motor off.

For a long time the three of them stood there, silently aghast, in that whited-out, chill space. El-Akkad consulted his watch. “Two forty-five,” he noted. “How far do you think it is from here to the hotel?”

Suyuti turned on him. “How can you be so callous?”

“I’m not getting back in that automobile,” el-Akkad returned, hotly. “It is cursed. This whole evil landscape is cursed! I’m
walking
back to the hotel, and then I’m getting on the next boat back to civilisation.”

“You never liked him,” Suyuti spat. “You were envious of him. He had twice the intellect you did. And now look at him!”

“Envy?” scoffed el-Akkad. “Don’t be absurd.”

“It happened,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said in a small voice, “when he took his gloves off.”

“What do you mean by that?” Suyuti snarled, turning on him. “Are you blaming me? Is it my fault?”

“
You
organised the trip,” el-Akkad said, accusingly. “You brought us all here. Ultimately of
course
you’re to blame.”

“I only meant,” a conciliatory el-Kafir el-Sheikh explained, “that it was only after his bare flesh touched the steering wheel, that…”

But the other two were not listening. “You are a disgrace to archaeology!” Suyuti yelled.

“At least I
am
an archaeologist! You’re just a jumped up pen-pushing civil servant!”

“He was
my
friend – you never liked him. Petty professional jealousy!”

“I’m going back to the hotel,” el-Akkad fumed. “And tomorrow I’m getting the boat and going home, whereupon I hope never to see you again.” He stomped off and was lost in the mist almost immediately.

“Come back here!” Mohammed Suyuti shrieked. “We are not leaving Gurbati’s body to be devoured by wolves! We are just not – leaving – him –
here
!”

His words were swallowed by the muffling fog. There was no reply. The whiteness and silence. El-Kafir el-Sheikh looked around. There was the car, the ground at his feet, and Suyuti’s form. But apart from that, a few black tree-trunks like spectral versions of themselves, everything was milky and blank. Suyuti hid his face in his hands.

After a while, el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked: “I suppose we can’t trust the car.”

“No,” agreed Suyuti.

“And what
about
Gurbati? Shall we bury him?”

“I don’t suppose we can,” Suyuti replied, into his palms. “I don’t suppose that’s practical, without shovels. Poor Hussein!” He dropped his hands to his sides and stood up straighter. “Let’s put the roof up, at any rate. Maybe that will keep the wild beasts off his body.”

“Alright,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said, and although he had a flinchy desire not to touch the automobile at all, he pulled his gloves tighter and helped Suyuti unpack the canvas roof from its rear compartment. It came out on unfolding metal struts, like an umbrella, and they pulled it to the front windshield, fixing it into place. “Do you want to say something?” el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked.

“I’m no imam,” was Suyuti’s reply. “And anyway: we can have a proper funeral later. After we’ve got home and sorted this sorry business out. We’ll have servants come retrieve the car tomorrow.” He leaned through the opened door, and when he stood straight again he was holding a pistol. “Here,” he instructed el-Kafir el-Sheikh. “It’s no good to him any more, but you may need it.”

“I haven’t so much as touched a firearm since national service,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh replied.

“There are wolves in the woods,” was all Suyuti said, and he slammed the door shut. El-Kafir el-Sheikh slipped the pistol into his jacket pocket.

They set off trudging along the road, walking through the silent and unchanging white. Dark trunks toyed with el-Kafir el-Sheikh’s peripheral vision, as if trying, and failing, to manifest into full presence only to fade into nothing again. The road squelched underfoot. His feet were soaked inside his shoes. His clothes, still wet, slapped and rubbed uncomfortable against his skin as he moved.

“Mohammed,” he said, shortly. “What do you think happened?” When the other man did not reply, he pressed. “To Gurbati, I mean. Back there.”

“He died,” Suyuti returned.

“But
how
? And that native boy, back at the dig. I have never heard of a form of tubercular infection so rapid in its pathology.” He was interrupted by a long, mournful, bassoon-like howl – far away or nearer by, it was impossible to say. Both men stopped, and in the absence of their squelching footsteps everything was perfectly quiet. There was another long lupine call, and then nothing. “We’d better hurry along,” was Suyuti’s opinion.

They picked up their speed.

“There must
be
a scientific explanation,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh pressed. “I mean, must be! But what? El-Akkad said –”

Suyuti broke in with a scornful barking laugh. “I consider
him
no longer my friend and colleague,” he said. “I’ll not even say his name. He fell into superstitious nonsense almost as soon as he arrived on these shores. Magic and nonsense, and the worship of devils. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with these people? I’m no racist, Gamal; but they’re a
primitive
people, closer to apes than true men. Ancestor worship. Human sacrifice!” They squelched on for a while without talking. The road dipped down, and then climbed once again. There came a new drizzle, and soon enough it thickened into full rainfall.

One consequence of this was that the fog – finally – began to dissolve and vanish. The trees all around them came into focus, like a photograph being developed. Soon enough the fog was gone, the whiteness filled in with a retreating vista of trees. It was a development that gladdened el-Kafir el-Sheikh’s heart. The rain thrummed onto his head, and water was dribbling from his beard, but he felt somehow cleaner with it.

“Ah well,” he called to his companion. “One can only get so wet, and no wetter!”

Suyuti looked back, over his shoulder, and if he didn’t exactly smile then at least his scowl shrank away. He nodded.

Then he flew to the left, and rolled on the ground between the trees in a tangle of limbs and grey.

It took el-Kafir el-Sheikh a slow moment to comprehend what was happening, and then another moment to act. His limbs responded only slow and sluggish to his mental command. Suyuti was yelling. He came up, struggling, and the wolf covered him again. A snarl, a snap, and Suyuti’s yells shifted to throttled gulps.

E-Kafir el-Sheikh brought out from his jacket pocket Gurbati’s pistol, but slowly, and then he took aim. The beast had Suyuti by the throat. He could not afford to shoot at the creature’s head, for fear of hurting Suyuti. He took hold of his right wrist with his left hand. Then he stopped.