The Eye of the Moon

TO THE READER:

On page 145 of
The Book With No Name,
the Mystic Lady issued this warning about the Eye of the Moon:

It has a powerful presence, and it will draw evil towards it wherever it goes. You’re not safe as long as you have it with you. In fact, you’re not really safe if you’ve ever had contact with it.

Dear Reader,

In your hands you now hold
The Eye of the Moon.

Enjoy it while it lasts …

ANONYMOUS

Michael O’Mara Books Limited

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

Michael O’Mara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard, Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

Copyright © The Bourbon Kid 2008, 2009

The right of the author (under the accredited pseudonym The Bourbon Kid) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84317-429-5 in Epub format

ISBN: 978-1-84317-430-1 in Mobipocket format

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Joel Rockwell couldn’t remember ever being this nervous before. His career as a nighttime security guard in the Santa Mondega Museum of Art and History had been uneventful, to say the least. He had wanted to follow his father, Jessie, into the police force, but he hadn’t measured up at the Academy. In some respects he was relieved that he had failed. Police work was far more dangerous. As had been proved just three days earlier, when his father had been gunned down by the Bourbon Kid in the aftermath of the eclipse during the Lunar Festival. So a soft job as a security guard had seemed like a safer option. Or at least it had done, until about five minutes ago.

The most burdensome part of his nightly duties was having to sit in the security office watching a bank of monitors, which generally showed that absolutely nothing was happening within the museum walls. The grey uniform suit that Joel was obliged to wear in the job was itchy as hell, too. It had probably been worn by countless other employees long before it had been handed to him on his first day, and it just wasn’t designed with sitting around in mind. Staying comfortable in it was usually the biggest task of the night. Except that what he’d just seen on monitor number three had changed all that.

Joel Rockwell was not an imaginative man. He was not an especially intelligent one, either, and it was the lack of these two qualities that had eventually led to him flunking the Police Academy course. As one of his instructors – a grizzled thirty-year lieutenant – had noted on his confidential report, ‘This guy is so dumb even his fellow cadets noticed.’ None the
less, he had a certain doggedness and honesty that made him a good witness and a reliable guard, if only because he lacked the imagination and intelligence to be anything else.

If his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, he’d just witnessed a murder on the screen. His colleague Carlton Buckley appeared to have been attacked and killed while wandering around on the floor below ground level. Rockwell would have called the police, but describing what he thought he’d just seen would only have made them laugh, and maybe arrest him for wasting their time. So he did the next best thing, and called Professor Bertram Cromwell, one of the museum’s directors.

He had the Professor’s number saved in his cell phone, and despite feeling a little uneasy about calling him at such an ungodly hour he went ahead and did it anyway. Cromwell was one of those exquisitely polite gentlemen who would never make him feel bad for calling, no matter how trivial the issue.

With his heart pounding in his chest and his phone held to his ear waiting for Cromwell to pick up the call, he headed out of the security office and down to the lower level to check out for himself what he thought he’d just seen in the Egyptian display.

He reached the foot of a flight of stairs and had just taken a right turn into a long hallway when Cromwell finally answered. Unsurprisingly, the Professor sounded like a man who’d been woken from a deep sleep.

‘Hello? Bertram Cromwell speaking. Who is this, please?’

‘Hi Bernard, it’s Joel Rockwell at the museum.’

‘Hi Joel. It’s Bertram, by the way, not Bernard.’

‘Whatever. Look, I think we’ve got an intruder here at the museum, but I’m not totally sure, so I thought I’d call you before I, you know, got the police an’ everything.’

Cromwell seemed to wake up a little. ‘Really? What’s happening?’

‘Well, this is gonna sound kinda nuts, but I think someone just broke out of the Egyptian Mummy display.’

‘Say again?’

‘The Mummy display. I think someone just came out of the goddam tomb thing.’

‘
What
? That’s impossible! What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Yeah, I know it sounds nuts. That’s why I called you first. See, I think whoever it was has just attacked the other security guard.’

‘Who’s the other guy on with you tonight?’

‘Carter Bradley.’

‘You mean Carlton Buckley?’

‘Yeah, whatever. I’m not sure if it’s him, like, playing a prank or not. But if it’s
not
a joke, then he’s gotta be in serious trouble. Like real serious trouble.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’ The Professor, now wide awake, paused for a second to gather his thoughts, then said quietly, ‘What have you actually
seen,
Joel? Facts, my boy – I need facts. If you’ll forgive me saying so, you’re not making a great deal of sense at the moment, and I’m rather tired.’

During his conversation with Cromwell Joel had continued walking along the broad, dimly lit hallway until, sooner than he would have liked, he arrived at the end of it. He took a deep breath, then turned right into the vast open gallery known as Lincoln Hall.
That was when he heard the music.
A light piano tune was being played. A gentle sad tune, not unlike the ‘Lonely Man’ theme tune played at the end of
The Incredible Hulk
TV show that he had loved as a kid in the late seventies. He knew there was a piano down here somewhere, but who the fuck was playing it? Yeah, and playing it so fucking badly, as well …

‘Hold on a minute, Professor Crumpler. You’re not gonna believe this, but I can hear a piano playing. I’m just gonna put my phone in my pocket for a second. Hold tight and I’ll let you know what I see.’

Rockwell slipped his small phone into the breast pocket of his grey shirt and pulled his nightstick from its loop on his belt. Then he stepped into the huge hall to investigate further. The piano was tucked away behind a sand-coloured wall on
his left that ran halfway down the hall. Paintings of famous musicians were hung along its entire length. Ignoring the music for a second, he focused his attention on the Egyptian display to his right, an imposing permanent exhibit billed as ‘The Mummy’s Tomb’. It had been trashed. There was glass all over the floor where the protective shield around the display had been shattered. And, mixed in with the glass, there was blood. Lots of blood.

Most notably, the golden sarcophagus that stood upright in the centre of the display was open. The front of it was lying on the floor, and the mummified remains of its late occupant were gone. Rockwell knew that Professor Cromwell loved this particular exhibit. He would be mighty upset if his prized possession had been stolen, or even tampered with. It was the museum’s centrepiece, the rarest and most valuable object in the entire, vast collection. And now the best part of it was missing.

Rockwell thought back to what he believed he’d seen on the monitor in the security office, and shook his head in confusion. Only a few minutes had passed since then, but he was already beginning to think he’d imagined the attack on Buckley. This had to be a prank, yeah? Not a well-timed one, what with all the recent killings in Santa Mondega and thereabouts – kinda tasteless, really, you wanted his opinion – but a prank even so. And what was the deal with the fucking piano?
Learn to carry a tune, whoever you are!
he thought, with, even for him, breathtaking inconsequentiality.

To reach the piano – which, if rumours were true, had once been owned by a famous composer – he was going to have to manoeuvre himself around the mess of glass and blood and past a giant statue of the classical Greek hero Achilles to a small alcove on the other side of the long, sand-coloured wall. If he remembered correctly, a life-size wooden mannequin sat at the piano, styled and dressed to resemble the noted composer who had owned it.
Who was it?
he pondered.
Beethoven? Mozart? Manilow?
It wasn’t important enough to dwell on, and in any case he soon had his answer. As he
headed past the statue of the great, if sulky, Greek warrior and rounded the end of the sand-coloured wall, he saw the mannequin lying on its back on the floor some distance from the piano, as though thrown there with considerable force. It was wearing a purple-coloured jacket over a white shirt, the ensemble finished off with dark flared trousers above shiny black shoes. There was a name tag pinned to the left breast of the jacket. ‘Beethoven’, it read, but Rockwell didn’t notice it as he stepped over the wooden figure, so he was still none the wiser as to which composer this was meant to be.

Clearly it wasn’t the mannequin that was playing the piano. It was something else. He took a few steps closer to the instrument in the corner of the alcove in order to get a look at the musician responsible for the badly played tune. When he was finally close enough, he saw a figure sitting on the small stool in front of the grand piano, tinkling the ivories with rather more verve than skill. The sight sent a cold shiver down his spine.