The Book of the Dead (4 page)

“This is where they keep what they think of as the truth,” the god explains, leading him into a small pueblo hut. Ramesses looks around for a moment before he ducks inside, and sees the faces of the Acoma tribe, with all sorts of expressions suggesting interest and lack of it, involvement and lack of it, as real as life.

Inside the hut stands Osiris, green-skinned, his legs wrapped, holding his crook and flail in the posture of a Pharaoh. Ramesses relaxes. It really is time, and he’s ready. “We’ve had your ba here for some time,” says the god, unrolling a scroll and raising an eyebrow. “And when we heard you’d finally gotten around to gracing us with your presence, we sent ahead for your heart.” And there it is, in his hand, a tiny shrivelled apple of a thing.

And now Ramesses is afraid again. For himself, and his people, and that he won’t see his son. He can hear movement outside, a siren again; a shadow is cast through the door onto the wall. It’s Ammit, the devourer, the end of the world, ready to take him.

Osiris produces the scales, and puts the heart on one of them. Ramesses gets out his spell jar, and switches it on, fingers fumbling with the tiny glyphs on the screen. Osiris makes a movement of his fingers, and produces a feather from the air, that is the goddess Maat, also represented by a glyph. It’s good to see Mattie again. The green god puts the feather onto the other pan of the scale. The heart starts to grumble. Ramesses is fearful that it’ll tell tales about the anger and cruelty of his life. So he quickly activates the spell he’s been told will silence it. He lets out a long breath as the heart subsides. Osiris smiles at him. Well done.

The feather and the heart remain in balance. Osiris produces another scroll, and compares it to the ba. Then he asks the first of the forty-two questions. “Have you committed a sin?”

Ramesses makes sure the right spell is activated and quickly replies. “No.”

The list includes having slain people, terrorised people or stolen the property of a god, all of which Ramesses knows he’s done, but the spell lets his lies go unchallenged. One of the questions is whether or not he’s felt remorse, which makes him feel particularly vindicated. He may not have changed the Duat, but it has not changed him.

Osiris reaches the end. The feather has remained in balance with the heart. He smiles again, and holds up his own spell jar to show Ramesses. On it is a communication from a Museum in Atlanta, who have bought him intending to set him free.

The transition finally happens on one of these people’s flying machines, somewhere over the ocean. The context changes between the Duat and the mirror of heaven. Ramesses finds himself standing beside the crate containing his body, and here is Seti with him!

He laughs and cries, hugs his son to his breast. They are both themselves again. “The things the gods have put in place!” says Seti.

“I liked your Institute,” says Ramesses.

“They do their best,” says Seti, stroking his father’s hair.

The Mummy lurches forward, all of its illusions undone by the meddlesome Englishmen. Gone is the dapper, sandy-skinned gentleman of indeterminate age and ethnicity. In his place is a desiccated corpse swaddled in yellowing bandages, the eyes set deep in its taut, skeletal face burning with malevolent fury.

The Englishmen stumble backwards, revulsion and terror straining their universally handsome features. Impossible as this transformation most assuredly is, the most maddening element is how swiftly the Mummy moves. Were it a shambling mummy, its stiff limbs propelling it in staccato jerks…that would be one thing. This is something else entirely.

The Mummy snatches a strapping blond gent by the throat before his fellows can blink, and a hand that looks ready to crumble apart squeezes shut on its victim’s cravat. There is a sound like wet gravel crunching under a tyre. Blood erupts from the man’s mouth and nose as the Mummy casts him aside, his attention shifting to the next of the doomed as soon as he feels his first victim’s soul torn loose.

The Englishmen see nothing but the horror before them as a second man is broken by the creature’s herculean strength, but the Mummy sees everything, all veils pulled aside for his inspection: Anubis receiving the hearts of the dead Englishmen, the Scale of Maat tipping to condemn the interlopers, the crocodilian jaws of Ammit lunging up to devour their souls … everything.

Even before the third man expires the Mummy knows the sad truth. All of these pasty creatures shall be found wanting, none of them worth the weight of a feather. None, that is, save the one in the back: the Wolfman.

The Mummy stares up impassively at his tormentors. The boys are in his class but even if he weren’t lying in the grass they would tower over him. The Mummy’s father insists he hasn’t hit his growth spurt yet, but considering Mr. Rasul is barely five foot three inches himself, the Mummy doesn’t hold much hope of ever being a normal height. Not that size is everything.

“Paki bastard,” says the ringleader, a sociopathic Adonis named Smith, and he gestures toward the park’s gate. “Didn’t you see the sign – no dogs allowed, innit.”

“Learning to read is a fine endeavour, Mr. Smith, but might I suggest you also brush up on your geography? Egypt and Pakistan are on entirely different continents.”

The Mummy knows it is better to take the hiding in silence, but this is all getting to be a bit much and the words are out before he can stop them. Most of the football players who frequent the park are browner than the Mummy, and in all his afternoons coming here he has never before had the misfortune to run into Smith and the rest. The list of places he avoids is already long enough, thank you very much, without adding on the only decent field in walking distance.

“That’s pretty funny,” says Smith, but he doesn’t look like he thinks it is very funny at all. The kick he delivers to the Mummy’s stomach confirms this. “Come round and this’ll be your arse, Aladdin.”

The Mummy’s traitorous body has folded up on itself, but he forces himself to look. Smith is holding out one hand, a flick knife in the other. Behind him, the other three bullies are grinning, hungry for the kill, but the Wolfman fidgets, seemingly reluctant to pass over the Mummy’s football. Fight the beast, the Mummy thinks, but he knows there’s no hope. Each of his friends is a full moon to the boy, and Smith shines brighter than the rest put together.

“Ball,” Smith demands, and although the Wolfman passes it over, he hasn’t joined in the chorus of taunts his pals are levelling at the Mummy. He’s still holding off the wolf, but only barely. The Mummy almost feels worse for the Wolfman than he does for himself.

“Don’t take it out on the ball,” groans the Wolfman. “I need a new one anyway.”

“You don’t want this one, Richie – it’s probably got a bomb in it,” says Smith, and dropping the ball to the grass, he plunges his blade into it. The hiss of the dying adidas is what finally undoes the last of the Mummy’s defences, and he begins to cry even before Smith penalty-kicks the deflating ball into his face. “Goal!”

The Mummy is drawn to the museum by the stolen artefacts from his land. His true nature hidden behind the artifice of flesh, he strides through the marble halls, just another patron of the arts. A wry smile twists his fat lip as he sees the tourists clustered around the bogman, oblivious to the peat-preserved corpse’s walking, talking cousin that strolls behind them. The Mummy flirts with dropping his disguise, letting these gawping fools scream and scream as he hurls them one after another through display cases… But then he altruistically passes them by, unharmed, unaware. There will be time enough for vengeance against the cruel ignorance of mortals, but the Mummy has waited for millennia, he can wait a little longer.

In the Ancient Egypt Collection, the treasures of his people await his worthy gaze. He nods his head as he reads the papyrus records of his deeds, and while his eyes never land on the object labels he mouths their text as he surveys the amulets and the brooches, the rings and the bracelets. All this was his, before time and death and the grubby hands of tomb robbers cheated him. All this is his by right of birth, and right of death. The Mummy puts his hand on the glass covering the sarcophagus where he slept for millennia, before the Englishmen defiled his tomb and summoned him back from the Field of Reeds. He imagines sneaking in after hours, smashing the glass and crawling back inside. If only it were that easy to put an end to all this…

“Sorry I’m late,” says the Wolfman when he turns up an hour later. He doesn’t apologize for anything else, but the Mummy doesn’t expect him to — the man cannot be held accountable for the crimes of the wolf. The Mummy firmly believes monsters must respect one another’s monstrosity; no one else will. What sets the Mummy’s teeth on edge is the creature floating down the hall beside the Wolfman.

Her hair is dark as freshly turned gravedirt and her skin is the pale shade of moonlight on tombstones. Among the charms on her chain-laden neck is an ankh, but the Mummy isn’t fooled. Even with the crucifix hanging beside it he can recognize a vampire when he sees one. Probably one of those slutty Karnsteins, to go on the shortness of her skirt and the dark marks on the Wolfman’s neck from where she’s fed. She must be a powerful example of her wretched kind to openly wear the symbol of her enemy, but perhaps stacking the religious emblems together they cancel one another out.

“That’s all right,” says the Mummy. “I was late as well. Just arrived.”

The Vampire raises a crudely pierced eyebrow, and the Mummy’s stomach turns over in its canopic jar in the display case beside them. He remembers, too late, that this fiend was among the crowd around the bogman when he first arrived. She doesn’t say anything, though, doesn’t laugh at his petty deception, and the Mummy dares to hope that this godless creature believes the undead owe one another some measure of allegiance.

“I’m Kelly.” The Vampire extends a black-nailed hand.

“Shit, sorry,” says the Wolfman. “Kelly, Seth; Seth, Kelly. You two want to wander around?”

“I was on time,” says the Vampire, squeezing the Mummy’s fingers as they shake hands. “So I’ve seen the sights. Besides, the film starts in an hour so we should get a move on. Nice meeting you, Seth.”

“You want to see a film?” asks the Wolfman, failing to notice the Vampire’s frown. The Mummy is about to make up an excuse other than his empty wallet, when the Wolfman adds,“ My treat. It’s some American nasty, should be just your thing.”

“It is nice to meet you as well…Kelly,” says the Mummy, speaking in the slow, stately fashion of Boris Karloff, which he thinks masks his accent. “It would be my pleasure.”

It isn’t the Mummy’s pleasure at all, as it turns out, because the Wolfman gnaws on the Vampire’s face for the whole picture while the Mummy sits stiffly beside them, pretending not to notice.

Later, in his room, the Mummy envisions a variation on the afternoon, one without the meddlesome Vampire. The Mummy tells himself that because in their former lives the Wolfman was actually a woman, and the daughter of the High Priest of Amun at that, their love makes sense, even in their current bodies. This belief in their shared past, their future destiny, doesn’t diminish his shame when he stashes the sticky mummy’s wrap of ill-used tissues at the bottom of his rubbish bin.

Cleopatra’s Needle rises above the fog-brushed Thames, a trophy for the Englishmen, a reminder to the Mummy of all he has lost. Would his own people welcome him if he were to return, triumphantly bringing home a horde of stolen antiquities, or would they fear him as well, mistaking his honey-thick English for the genuine artefact instead of an artifice erected to deceive the British? Both the white and the brown fear him, he decides, both tremble at the abomination of his existence, but perhaps the latter have some small measure of respect for the trials he has undergone to be here, girded again in mortal flesh.

“Oy, Arab!” The hostile voice cuts through the Mummy’s defences. He doesn’t turn to face the bully on the pavement, instead keeping his eyes on the hieroglyphs carved into the granite. “I’m talkin’ to you, son!”

The Mummy can’t believe this is happening. Traffic flows by just beside the obelisk – is some maniac really going to attack him here, in public? Should he run?

“Oy, Seth!” The Mummy turns, then, realizing it was the Vampire, disguising her voice. That utter bitch. He’s been forced to spend time with her on half a dozen occasions now, and it disappointed to see that yet another of his rare, friendly meet-ups with the Wolfman is to be crashed by this undead slag. “Thought you’d turned to stone for a minute there.”

A pause while he coldly appraises her.

“Just fucking with you, mate.” The Vampire smiles…nervously? Who can tell with the damned.

“Yes,” says the Mummy. “You were just fucking with me, weren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah? Whatever. So Rich…”

“He’s late,” says the Mummy, looking up and down the riverwalk.

“He’s not coming,” says the Vampire. “Called me to say.”

“Oh.” The Mummy reminds himself that his is a waiting game, that being reunited with the oblivious reincarnation of an ancient lover is never easy. He should not feel disappointment the way mortals do. “Very well then, Ms. Webb. Good afternoon.”

“What?” The Vampire cants her head, oil-black hair pooling on the shoulder of her black hoodie dress. “How’d you know my last name?”

“It is my business to know such things,” says the Mummy, which is such a good line he can’t help but smile.

To his frustration, the Vampire smiles back. She says, “You want to watch a film? My mum does the night shift, so she’ll be out of the house soon and we could just watch something at my place, save some dosh?”

“Why?” The Mummy winces to hear his voice without its carefully cultivated accent, and he struggles to restore his illusions. Like a vision in a magic pool, he summons up the image of the Wolfman’s sneering face as he, Smith, and the rest of their gang upend his rucksack into a mud puddle. In his best Karloff, he says, “You will not make Richard jealous by inviting me into your home, Ms. Webb.”

“Why?” The Vampire asks. “Because he’s an arsehole, or because you’re a bender?”

“I’m not,” says the Mummy, but again he hears the weak protest of a boy instead of the imperious denial of a pharaoh. This Karnstein chippie is siphoning away at his powers, and he flees as fast as he can without breaking into a trot. She glides alongside him, her foundation-pallid cheeks split in toothy grin.

“It was a joke, Seth,” she says. “You’ve never heard of those before?”

“I did not find it amusing,” says the Mummy, slowing to a regular walk now that it’s clear she’ll just keep up unless he flat out runs from her. He wonders if he was being naïve about her motivations. What if instead of seeking to provoke the Wolfman by giving his friend attention, the Vampire actually wants to feed on
him
? What a dreadful possibility. She’ll be awfully disappointed when she gets a mouthful of dust.

“Then why are you smiling? Never mind, come on,” she says, grabbing his hand. “Let’s skip the make believe and get straight to the real deal. You ever been to Abney Park?”

“I am unfamiliar with this place,” says the Mummy as she leads him up through the Temple. “Are there gardens there?”

“Plenty of pansies,” says the Vampire. “It’ll be right up your back passage.”

After forty-five uncomfortable minutes sitting beside the Vampire on the bus, Abney Park turns out to be a sprawling, overgrown cemetery with a ruined chapel at its heart. The Mummy is delighted. This is the first time in his life that something truly appropriate has happened – usually the lurching Frankenstein’s Monsters just play rugby, the prowling werewolves steal your lunch money, and the ghouls haunt Camden, not churchyards. The only thing weirder than this girl genuinely liking to hang out in graveyards is all the older men loitering around the monuments, more than one of them licking his lips as the two young monsters pass. Cannibals, probably.

They talk about horror movies, because that’s about all they’ve got in the way of a common interest. Other than the Wolfman.

“Mummies are the worst,” says the Vampire as they wander through the paths, the nettle leaves dripping from the burned-off fog. “So boring. What’s good about mummies?”

The Mummy is used to this icy reception to his kind. If people had any bloody respect for mummies, there would be far fewer curses and risen pharaohs, wouldn’t there? Nevertheless, here among the mute dead he feels obliged to stick up for them. “Even now, we barely understand how they kept them so intact. Their arcane methods of preserving the dead were known only to a chosen few, and the last High Priest of Amun took this knowledge with him to the tomb. Even after studying all the mummies we’ve unearthed and stolen from Egypt, we can’t be sure of how they did it. The grave does not readily relinquish its secrets.”

The Vampire appraises the Mummy, seemingly impressed, and the Mummy adds, “What could be cooler than that?”

“You’re a proper nerd, Seth,” says the Vampire, which take a little of the air out of him. “Mummies are just zombies wrapped up in rags.”