The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (37 page)

“Well, I don’t like this, sir, I really don’t,” Trent said.

Hancock pushed past him and hefted the lid himself before the two men could stop him. Galton tried to catch it before the bottom struck the floor. Oscar gave a little gasp.

Inside stood the mummy, shrunken, blackened.

“What the hell is going on here!” Hancock raged.

“And what exactly do you mean, sir?” Trent asked.

“Everything goes back to the museum now.”

“But, sir.”

“That’s not the same mummy, you fool. That’s from a peddler’s shop in London! I saw it myself. It was offered to me for sale. Damn that woman! She’s stolen the find of the century!”

It was long past midnight. No more music came from the public rooms. Cairo slept.

Elliott walked alone in the dark courtyard between the two wings of Shepheard’s Hotel. His left leg was going numb; but he paid no heed to it. Now and then he glanced up at the figure pacing in the suite above; a shadow moving back and forth across the slatted blinds. Ramsey.

Samir’s room was dark. Julie’s light had gone out an hour ago. Alex was long gone to bed, worried about Ramsey, and thoroughly confused as to whether Julie had fallen in love with a madman.

The figure stopped. It moved to the blinds. Elliott stood stock-still in the chilly darkness. He watched Ramsey peer out at the sky, and perhaps at the great web of stars flung out over the rooftops.

Then the figure disappeared altogether.

Elliott turned and hobbled awkwardly towards the doors to the lobby. He had just reached the shadowy foyer beyond the front desk when he saw Ramsey come down the grand staircase and make for the doors, his loose mane of brown hair in unkempt tangles.

I am mad, Elliott thought. I am madder than he has ever been.

Firmly gripping his cane, he made to follow. When he emerged from the front doors, he saw the dark figure ahead of him, walking fast across the square. The pain in his leg was now so bad he had to grit his teeth, but he pressed on.

Within a few minutes, Ramsey had reached the museum. Elliott watched him turn from the main entrance, and walk slowly to the far right side of the building, towards a light burning behind a barred window.

The yellow light spilled out of the small rear alcove. The guard was slumped in the chair, snoring blissfully. The rear door was open.

Elliott slowly entered the museum. He passed quickly through the empty chambers of the ground floor, past towering gods and goddesses. At last he reached the grand stairs and, clutching the railing, moved up step by step, hoisting his weight off his painful leg, trying not to make a sound in the thinning darkness.

A gray murky light filled the corridor. The window at the far end was paling visibly. And there stood Ramsey beside the low shallow display case, in which the mass of the dead woman in her petrified rags gleamed like black coal. Ramsey bowed his head in the gray light, like a man praying.

It seemed he whispered something in the dark. Or was he weeping? His profile was sharply clear, and so was the movement of his hand as he reached into his coat and drew out something that sparkled in the shadows.

A glass vial full of luminescent liquid.

Dear God, he cannot mean to do this
. What is this potion that he would even attempt it? Elliott almost cried out. He almost went to Ramsey and tried to stay his hand. But when Ramsey opened the vial, when Elliott heard the faint grinding of the metal cap, he shrank to the far side of the corridor, and concealed himself from view behind a tall glass cabinet.

How eloquent of suffering the distant figure was, poised there over the case, the open vial in his hand, the other hand rising to wipe his hair out of his forehead.

Then Ramsey turned as if to go and came down the corridor towards Elliott without seeing him.

Something changed in the light. It was the first palpable glow of the sun, a dull steel-grey radiance; a soft grey shimmer firing all the glass cases and cabinets of the long corridor.

Ramsey turned. Elliott could hear him sigh. He could feel his torment. Ah, but this is madness; this is unspeakable.

Helplessly, he watched as Ramsey approached the case again and broke loose the light wood-framed glass lid, and folded it silently backwards and away like the cover of a book, so that he might touch the dead thing inside.

With sudden speed, he produced the vial again. The gleaming white liquid flowed in droplets down on the corpse as Ramsey passed the vial back and forth above it.

“It’s vain, it cannot possibly work,” Elliott whispered half-aloud.
He found himself shrinking even closer to the wall, peering now through the glass sides of the cabinet.

In horror and fascination, he watched Ramsey smooth the fluid over the dead woman’s limbs. He saw him bend tenderly, as if placing the glittering vial to her mouth.

A hiss echoed through the darkness. Elliott let out a silent gasp. Ramsey stumbled back, pressing himself to the wall. The vial fell from his hand and rolled on the stone floor, a tiny bit of fluid still shimmering inside it. Ramsey stared down at the thing in front of him.

Movement of the dark mass in the low shallow bed of the case. Elliott saw it. He heard a low raw sound like breath.

Dear God, man, what have you done! What have you awakened!

The wood of the case gave a violent creak; the thin wooden legs appeared to shudder. The thing inside the case was stirring, rising.

Ramsey backed away into the corridor. A muffled cry escaped his lips. Beyond him, Elliott saw the figure sit up. The wooden case shattered and then collapsed, the noise echoing loudly throughout the museum. The thing stood square on its feet! Its great head of shaggy black hair poured down like thick smoke over its shoulders. The blackened skin was lightening, changing. A ghastly moan came out of the being. It raised its skeletal hands.

Ramsey moved backward away from it. A desperate prayer escaped him, full of the old Egyptian names of the gods. Elliott clamped a hand over his mouth.

Moving forward, its bare feet scratching the stones with the rough, dry sound of rats in the walls, the figure lowered its arms and reached out towards Ramsey.

The light shone in its huge staring eyes, the eyelids eaten away, the hair thickening and writhing as it grew sleeker and blacker and tumbled down longer over the bony shoulders.

But dear God, what were the patches of white all over it? They were the bones of the thing, the bare bones where the flesh had been torn away, perhaps centuries ago! Bare bone showing in the left leg, bare bone in the right foot, bare bones in the fingers struggling to reach Ramsey.

It’s not whole. You’ve raised a thing which is not whole
.

The light brightened in the window above. The first distinct rays pierced the ashen gloom. As Ramsey backed away
again, passing Elliott, half stumbling towards the far railing of the stair, the thing came on, gaining speed until it reached the sunlight.

And there it reached up as if trying to catch the rays, its moaning breaths coming rapid and desperate and full of panic.

The shriveled flesh of the hands was now bronze. The face was bronze, and growing lighter and paler and more truly human as the sun struck it.

It turned and rocked on its feet, as if drinking up the light, and the blood began to ooze from the torn wounds that everywhere exposed the skeleton.

Elliott closed his eyes. For one moment he almost lost consciousness. He was aware of noise below. A door slamming far to the back of the huge building.

He opened his eyes to see the thing drawing nearer. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Ramses plastered to the rail of the stairs, staring in undisguised horror.

God in heaven, drive it back
. Elliott felt the burning in his chest, the familiar tightening. The pain shot down his left arm, and with all his strength he clutched the silver cane. He willed himself to breathe, to remain standing.

The skeletal thing was filling out. Its flesh was now the color of Elliott’s own flesh; and the hair a great wavy mop veiling its shoulders completely. And its clothing—even its clothing had changed. Its clothing was once again white linen where the elixir had splashed. The creature bared its white teeth to the roots as it moaned. Its breasts heaved and the ragged linen fell loose from the womanly shape, tangling in the legs that trudged doggedly forward.

Its eyes were fixed on the man at the end of the hall. Its breath came in heaves. Its mouth became a grimace.

Noises from below. The shrill sound of a whistle. A man shouting in Arabic.

Ramses reeled. They were coming up the staircase. Their shouts could only mean that they had seen him.

In panic, he turned back to the female figure drawing ever closer.

A rasping cry escaped her lips.

“Ramses!”

The Earl closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and stared at the skeletal hands outstretched as the woman passed him.

There was a cry of “Halt!” and then a shot. The creature screamed and clamped her fingers over her ears. She staggered backwards. Ramses had been struck by the bullet, and pivoted to face the men coming up the stairs. Desperately he turned back to the female. Another volley of shots! The deafening roar resounded through the corridor. Ramses fell back against the marble rail.

The female shuddered, hands still covering her ears. She appeared to lose her balance, staggering between the stone sarcophagi on the opposite side of the hall. When the whistle shrieked again, she roared in terror.

“Ramses!” It was the cry of a wounded animal.

GAIN, ELLIOTT almost lost consciousness. Again he closed his eyes, and struggled to fill his lungs with air. His left hand, clutching the walking stick, was now entirely numb.

He could hear the sounds of the guards dragging Ramses down the stairs. Clearly Ramses was fighting. But there were too many of them.

And the woman! She’d disappeared. Then he heard her feet scraping the stone floor again. He peered through the glass beside him to see her retreating to the far end of the hall. Whimpering, her breath still coming in gasps, she vanished through a side door.

All sound had died away below. Apparently Ramses had been removed from the museum. But undoubtedly men would come to search within minutes.

Ruthlessly ignoring the pain in his chest, Elliott hurried down the corridor. He reached the side door in time to see the female just disappearing from view at the foot of a service stair. Quickly he turned back, glancing under the display cases. There lay the vial, still gleaming in the grey light. Going down on one knee, he managed to get hold of it; and closing its cap, he put it in his coat.

Then, fighting a wave of dizziness, he crept down the stairs after the female, his numbed left leg almost tripping him. Halfway
down he saw her—bewildered, staggering, one clawlike hand raised as if groping in the dimness.

A door opened suddenly, leaking yellow light into the passage; and a servant woman emerged, her hair and body draped in the Moslem manner by a garment of black wool. She carried a mop in her right hand.

At once she saw the skeletal figure approaching, and she let out a shrill scream, the mop falling from her hands. She fled back into the lighted room.

A low hiss came out of the wounded one and then that awful roar again as she went after the serving maid, skeletal hands out as if to stop the piercing scream.

Elliott moved as fast as he could. The screams stopped before he reached the door of the lighted room. As he entered, he saw the body of the servant woman slumping, dead, to the floor. Her neck had apparently been broken and the flesh torn from her cheek. Her glassy black eyes stared at nothing. And the ragged wounded one stepped over her and moved towards a small mirror over the washbasin on the wall.

A wretched agonized sobbing broke from her when she saw her reflection. Gasping, shuddering, she reached out and touched the glass.

Again, Elliott almost collapsed. The sight of the dead body and the ghastly creature before the glass were more than he could bear. But a ruthless fascination sustained him, as it had all along. He must use his wits now. Damn the pain in his chest and the panic rising like nausea in his throat.