The Frighteners (11 page)

“Except she was a queen,” somebody said, and the crowd laughed.

“That’s right.” Janet smiled. “Furthermore, we used magnetic resonance imagining—MRI—on the body, and found that she suffered from a disease we regard as being one of the hazards of modern-day living . . . rheumatoid arthritis.”

Several people laughed, and one man rubbed his lower back in sympathy.

“That diagnosis was also confirmed by X ray,” Janet continued. “Yes, we also X-rayed Queen Merytaten. So you can see another advantage of being an ancient Egyptian queen—today the insurance companies would never pay for all these tests.”

Janet flicked a switch and a row of monitors lit up behind the large glass screen set into the nearby wall, revealing a full-size X ray of the queen. Her shriveled features were grotesque when seen in X-ray form, not at all like the beautiful sculpture of her face on the sarcophagus.

Using the laser pointer, Janet drew the audience’s attention to a dark mass situated within the body cavity.

“This dark area here is, in fact, the queen’s viscera, carefully packaged and returned to the body cavity.”

Unseen by anyone else, of course, Stuart, Cyrus, and the Judge stood between Janet and the coffin. It was one of the benefits of being an emanation that you never had to peer over anyone’s head to see something.

“Can you imagine?” Stuart said. “Taking out your intestines, wrapping them up in a bag, and then putting them back in? That’s grotesque.”

“Turkeys come like that,” Cyrus added. “You got to remember to remove the bag of giblets before putting the bird in the oven.”

“People aren’t turkeys,” Stuart said.

“Maybe the turkey growers got the idea from the ancient Egyptians,” Cyrus said.

“I guess the idea was that the body would stay preserved longer if you wrapped up the guts,” Stuart said.

“Yeah, and in that way the deceased wouldn’t wind up lookin’ like the Judge.”

“I told you to mind your manners,” the Judge said. “I won’t have you talking disrespectfully in the presence of a woman.”

“Who exactly would you be referring to?” Stuart asked.

The Judge looked at the X ray with dewy eyes. “That’s a mighty fine woman,” he said. “Good teeth. A woman should always have good teeth.”

“You sound like you’re buying a horse,” Stuart replied.

Without warning, the Judge spit in his hands and slicked his hair back, then hitched up his pants and began to stagger toward the coffin.

“Judge?” Stuart’s voice was filled with alarm.

“Where you goin’?” Cyrus asked.

The Judge winked over his ectoplasm-covered shoulder. “You boys hurry along and help Frank make some money. I wanna make the acquaintance of this fine young lady.”

With that, the old emanation disappeared into the ancient sarcophagus, entering it so violently that it began wobbling on its base.

Stuart was horrified. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed.

He rushed toward the coffin, which was now rocking back and forth atop its marble plinth.

“There’s life in the old boy yet,” Cyrus said, with some admiration.

Janet was shocked. She looked at the rocking coffin—the priceless, thousands-of-years-old sarcophagus that had been excavated so carefully from Egypt’s famous Valley of the Kings—and saw her career disappearing. The crowd gaped at the coffin and then jumped back as curator Amos Osborne clutched the business card in his pocket and squeezed it as if it were a magic charm.

The coffin was now moving back and forth like one of those pop-up dolls weighted at the base.

“This can’t be happening,” Stuart exclaimed.

Then the coffin tumbled over and off its base, landing on the marble floor of the exhibition hall with a crash that resounded throughout every corner of the museum. The curator closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself basking in the sun on Tahiti as the echoes ran up and down the halls and finally faded away.

Everyone in the group of dignitaries rushed over to the fallen sarcophagus.

“Don’t touch it,” Janet yelled. “Oh no, don’t touch it.”

“The damn thing flipped over like one of those Mexican jumping beans,” Cyrus said, sliding through the crowd. When he got to the coffin, he could see the Judge’s butt bobbing up and down through the lid.

“The man’s incorrigible.” Cyrus shook his head and reached into the coffin to drag the Judge out by the ankles.

When he was back on his feet, the old man smiled. “I haven’t felt that way about a woman for nigh on one hundred and fifteen years.”

Unaware of this little exchange, Janet hurried over to the coffin and looked down at it. “My God, what could have happened?” she asked, speaking to no one in particular.

Curator Osborne, now white as a sheet and nearly trembling, stood next to her, gaping at the sarcophagus. “At least it stopped shaking,” he said, his voice as shaky as the coffin was a moment ago.

Cyrus was about to tell the Judge what he thought of his stunt when suddenly his face became a mask of horror. For at that moment he saw the Reaper come down the main hall, racing at unnatural speed, its black cape billowing out behind it, inky blue light streaming away from its body.

“What the hell is that?” Cyrus gasped as the creature slowed somewhat, sliding through the crowd unobtrusively. The blue light trailing behind it like a slipstream behind a jet plane sucked itself in, until it was just an ominous, unearthly glow about the creature itself.

“I never seen anything like that in my entire death,” the Judge said.

And Stuart was struck dumb.

Moving like the predator it was, the Reaper slid right through people who were completely unaware of its existence. Chief among the innocents was Janet King, who had made a quick assessment of the coffin and finally worked up the nerve to touch it. She bent and gave the sarcophagus a little shove, then straightened back up. “I think it will be all right,” she told Osborne.

“What do you supposed happened?” the curator asked.

“Well, if this were California, I’d blame an earthquake, but you don’t get many of them in Maine, do you?”

“Not many, no,” Osborne confirmed, finally prying his fingers away from Frank’s card, which had become clammy with perspiration.

The Reaper closed in on Janet and then stretched a handful of spikelike fingers in her direction. Suddenly a pattern of raised welts appeared on her forehead—it was the number thirty-nine.

Stuart found his voice. “He’s going to kill her,” he said.

The Reaper’s fingers, at first pointed at Janet’s forehead, lowered to point at her chest. He was about to plunge his hand into her chest when Cyrus yelled, “Don’t mess with her, man!”

Stuart whipped his head in the direction of his friend, who he had considered until that moment to be no more than an aging disco nut with no backbone or interest in anyone but himself.

Acting more like a linebacker, Cyrus charged forward, moving swiftly through the crowd of dignitaries and tackling the Reaper, knocking the creature off balance. Locked together, they slid along the polished museum floor right through the crowd, which had begun to move away in any case, the coffin episode having ended.

Then with incredible grace, the Reaper rose, towering above Cyrus like a dark angel, its slitlike yellow eyes blazing with fury. In one fluid movement, the Reaper produced a long, wooden staff from beneath his cloak. He raised it, then thumped the base on the floor. A huge, jagged blade swung out of the staff and locked into place with a metallic click. The blade shimmered with an ethereal glow. The Reaper had his scythe.

Cyrus leaped to his feet, ready to make another lunge at the huge, looming menace. He had no chance. The Reaper swung his scythe in a smooth and deadly gesture that sliced Cyrus across the chest, cutting through his suit and shirt and into his ectoplasmic body. Cyrus dropped to his knees, holding his middle, ectoplasm spilling out of the slice across his chest.

“He cut me!” Cyrus said, shocked. “I don’t believe it!”

Cyrus and the Judge watched fearfully from where they had taken shelter, inside a huge statue of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld.

Leaving Cyrus, the Reaper glided toward Janet, who was shaken by the sarcophagus episode but seemed happy it was over. She stood tall, smiling at the crowd.

“I can’t tell you what happened here, ladies and gentlemen, but there appears to be no serious damage to the coffin. Shall we move on?”

But she winced as the Reaper thrust its hand into her chest and breathed its hellish breath on her cheek. The hooded cowl nuzzled her neck as the creature buried its arm deeper and deeper into her chest.

“Don’t fear the Reaper,” it said silkily.

Janet gasped as the creature clutched her heart and squeezed the life out of it.

Nine

F
rank ran down the quiet and deserted streets of Fairwater, moving in the direction of the museum, hoping beyond hope that the creature had chosen to go somewhere else—preferably another planet. He stopped to catch his breath and looked around him, searching for any sign of life; even a rat or a police car would have been welcome. But life itself seemed to be missing from the streets. It was like finding yourself in a rock quarry at midnight with no breeze. Nothing stirred, nothing at all.

Then Bannister heard the sound of distant yelling and cries for help. He turned in the direction of the sound and saw the museum, and at that moment the night sky rumbled and crackled. What had been a star-filled canopy was suddenly filled with black and angry clouds. The fabric of the dark sky seemed to rip open and a shaft of brilliant white light like a gigantic laser beamed down into the museum.

Frank dashed down the distance that remained between himself and the building, and dashed up the steps. The red carpet seemed, in that instant, like a tissue soaked with blood. A few dazed-looking museum goers stumbled down it, shaken by the falling coffin and the horrible death that occurred moments afterward.

Bannister dashed through the lonely museum corridors, his footfalls as loud as cannon shots. When he arrived in the gallery where once stood the sarcophagus of Queen Merytaten, he found Janet King lying on the floor, her body bathed in a pool of brilliant white light. Above her rose the corridor of white light, which of course was visible only to her spirit, the emanations, and Bannister. Having done his work, the Reaper was now nowhere to be seen.

A man pounded furiously, and futilely, on Janet’s chest, trying to revive her, as a crowd of nervous onlookers stood by. Frank ran into the middle of the gallery then stopped short, reacting to the brilliance of the corridor of light. He looked up at it, recalling how it reached from the very heavens through the roof and upper floors of the building. Then he looked down and watched Janet’s spirit leave her corpse. The spirit seemed confused by the white light.

Frank rushed through the crowd of onlookers, reaching out to Janet’s spirit, touching the shoulder of her soul. She turned to Frank in that instant, her final one on earth, tears in her eyes. He saw then that the number thirty-nine was tattooed on her forehead, but was fading away.

Her spirit turned away from Bannister then, moved rapidly up into the corridor of light, and vanished. As it disappeared, the light snapped off.

The man who had been trying to pull her back to life hung his head. “She’s gone,” he mumbled.

Frank moved toward him. “I know,” he said.

“I did everything I could. I mean, I took a course in CPR at my son’s school. I did everything I could.”

“No one’s blaming you.” Frank offered the man a hand to help him to his feet.

“It must have been the shock when the coffin fell over.” Bannister looked at the sarcophagus, then at the marble plinth atop which it once stood.

The man continued, “It was the damnedest thing I ever saw. The queen’s coffin started rocking back and forth and then fell onto the floor. You should have heard the noise. Miss King was really rattled by it. I guess she had a bad heart to begin with.”

“I’m positive there was nothing you could have done.” Frank patted the man on the shoulder.

“Mr. Bannister?” a frightened voice asked. It was the curator, a man long trained in the rigors of science who suddenly found himself an unwilling believer in the mysteries of the spirit world.

“Yes?” Frank said, his attention torn away from the scene he had just witnessed.

“Can we talk?”

“Um . . . sure.”

Osborne took Frank’s arm and led him away from the crowd.

“What can I do for you, Mister . . .?”

“Osborne, Amos Osborne. I’m curator of the museum.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Bannister said, a bit disjointedly.

“I found a bunch of your cards before. I assume you left them.”

“Ah, no, actually.” Frank rolled his eyes. “I have no idea how they might have gotten here.”

“Well, I’m glad they did, because I held on to one. Maybe you can help us. We seem to have broken some sort of taboo.”

“Taboo?” Frank asked.

“You know, like the curse of Osiris or something?”

“If I remember my mythology, it was her husband whose body was turned into a pillar or something? What happened here tonight. I mean, before the heart attack.”

“Well, first this mummy
leered
at me. It was right after I threw some of your cards out.”

Frank rolled his eyes again.

“Then the queen’s sarcophagus started rocking back and forth, then—”

“Frank!” Stuart said, rising out of the floor behind the curator’s shoulder.

Unaware of the presence of the emanation, Osborne continued stating his case. But now Frank’s attention was riveted to his spirit friend.

“Please,” Osborne said, in a hushed voice. “You’ve got to help us.”

“It’s bad, Frank,” Stuart said. “Cyrus has been cut.”

Frank looked past him and saw Cyrus slumped against a glass display case, ectoplasm staining his white disco suit.

“Shit,” Frank said, shocked.

Thinking Bannister was talking to him, Osborne was momentarily stunned by this apparent rejection, and then spotted a group of paramedics who had just entered the building. “Excuse me one moment,” he said, and rushed off to greet them.