by D B Nielsen
But Fi hadn’t heard me as she had taken out her camera again and was preparing to photograph the monstrosity in front of us. As she put the viewfinder up to her eye, she gasped. Her fingers were shaking and her face was a picture of shock, pupils dilated.
‘What’s wrong?’ I demanded, moving closer to her in case she fainted. She looked pale and anxious.
‘I don’t know. I think I saw...’ she muttered, placing the camera back to her eye and adjusting the lens. ‘No way! Impossible!’
‘What? What? Let me see!’ I tried to take the camera off her but she wouldn’t let me. Instead, she started snapping shots in quick succession. ‘Fi, show me!’
‘Hey!’ A rough, deep voice broke through our struggle. ‘This is private property! You’re trespassing!’
A large, stocky figure erupted from the side of the house that hadn’t been affected by the blaze. It was difficult to see his face – a dirty hunting hat covered it entirely from view. He wore a pair of muddy galoshes covering the bottom of his worn brown corduroys. An oversized tweed coat and a brown scarf were casually slung over a thick green sweater. His stance was aggressive as he focused his full gaze on Fi and the camera that she held.
‘Get lost!’ he growled. I felt the full force of his anger and shivered. There was a leashed, coiled violence in his movements as he slashed the air with his hand, pointing us in the direction that we’d come from. There was something about him and his gestures that filled me with dread and I felt the need to get us out of there as quickly as possible.
‘Come on, Fi!’ I tugged at her arm, desperately trying to get her moving. But it was impossible to budge her.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered, her gaze riveted.
He reacted as if he had heard her – though he couldn’t possibly have, we were too far away and she’d barely spoken – as if her voice had scorched him. He drew back in revulsion, his hands fisting. I felt a thrill of genuine terror.
This time my voice was more urgent, more forceful. ‘Now, Fi! Come on! Let’s go!’
I didn’t give her a chance to break my hold, but spun her round and pulled her towards the woodland.
As we passed back under the canopy of oaks, Fi glanced back over her shoulder. I briefly turned back too, wanting to check that he wasn’t following us. He still stood at the edge of the courtyard – stiff, an unmoving statue, his hands clenched by his side.
And then it happened, so quickly I might have missed it if I’d blinked.
The scene shimmered.
Satis House stood before me in all its former glory, complete and intact, with a majesty that was breathtaking – clean lines of honeyed stone, wrought iron lacework, leaded windows, and with its stone towers soaring to the airy skies.
I blinked in wonder and awe, hardly daring to breathe. And then it was gone – leaving in its place the gutted ruin of before.
The hairs of my arms raised in fear.
Even when Satis House was some distance behind us I could still feel his hate-filled gaze piercing the foliage, tracking our desperate flight all the way, until we’d made it back to the safety of home.
COMPLICATIONS
CHAPTER FOUR
A week later and neither Fi nor I had ventured anywhere near the woods again. I’m sure that Dad was impressed and possibly confused by my sudden acceptance at being grounded. But the truth was simple – the Manor House embraced me with a safety and security that I was reluctant to give up after the episode at Satis House.
Strangely, Fi had become silent on the matter, not wishing to talk about what either of us had seen or experienced. I didn’t mind so much; I think we both needed time to adapt to what had happened and it also meant I could avoid discussing both the artefact and St. John with her.
I was certain anyway that Fi would have thought I was mad. She’d never been given to believing in other worlds like I did – and yet I had once seen her read the entire saga of The Lord of the Rings, though that was perhaps due more to Orlando Bloom than Tolkien. She was more pragmatic than me. But, despite this, I remembered rare occasions when she would get caught up in something completely inexplicable and irrational, and be carried away – even worse than me. One such occasion was over an Egyptian mummy.
Whilst Fi was not all that much interested in Dad’s work in ancient Mesopotamian history, as children, when we’d lived in London, we’d once ventured to the British Museum on a school excursion to see an exhibition on ancient Egypt; Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. For months after that trip, Fi had insisted that there was such a thing as Tutankhamen’s Curse, the curse of the pharaohs, even though I had told her – repeatedly – that it was nonsense; that there was no actual curse found in the pharaoh’s tomb and that the evidence for such curses relating to King Tutankhamen was considered so limited that eminent Egyptologists such as Redford considered it to be “unadulterated clap trap”.
But Fi wouldn’t listen.
She believed that the curse was real because she claimed that she’d felt a shiver go down her spine when she’d viewed Tutankhamen’s funerary objects.
Maybe that’s why it was easier for her now to believe in an artefact having enormous power. She was contradictory in that way.
So, for now, I kept my thoughts to myself, leaving Fi to hers.
The photos that Fi had taken which she’d sent off for processing as her darkroom equipment was still being shipped came back dreadfully blurred. Surprisingly, the ones taken in the forest were crystal clear but the images of Satis House were more than just merely out of focus; it was as if the house had fissures running through it, as if it had shifted on its foundations and was out of alignment.
We didn’t discuss the photos either. But, on occasion when I passed by Fi’s bedroom, I would hazard a peek, seeing her staring blankly at the scattered photographs on her floor – where once she would have been painting her nails while listening to her favourite boy band, or playing around on her Mac for a school assignment, or strumming away on her guitar – as if by simply gazing upon these images she could solve its mysteries.
Most of the week which passed, did so slowly for me. I spent quite a bit of my time in the study rifling through pages of history books and journals trying to dig up information on cuneiform script. I found a fascinating article on ancient Mesopotamian magic and mysticism which even gave details on exorcisms. I knew from Dad that there was an undisplayed hoard of obscure treasures at the British Museum; among them 130,000 cuneiform tablets that I would never be able to see. That was a pity. The closest I could come to accessing this information was to trawl through Dad’s extensive library of scholarly texts. By the end of the week, I had come no closer to my goal but was a little bit more familiar with Babylonian language and culture.
The rest of the time I spent keeping up with my friends on the Internet. I had just updated my Facebook page and was making my way down to dinner when I heard the phone ring simultaneously in the study and upstairs in the master bedroom. Dad’s low tones could be heard as I passed outside the open doorway of the study. I ignored his conversation until I heard the name St. John and found myself eavesdropping when I knew I shouldn’t have been.
‘Right ... Tuesday ... Have you ensured its safety ... greatest find ... that could potentially ... I see...’ His back was turned towards the door and I only picked up on snippets of information, ‘...if we’re having it moved to Conservation for ... the need for discretion ... Good, well, I’ll leave it in your capable hands, St. John...’
As Dad shifted his position, leaning against the edge of the desk, I ducked back behind the doorway out of view, feeling my heartbeat accelerate wildly. I could hear Mum calling for us to come to dinner and the tread of footsteps on the stairs – if I didn’t move soon I would be caught loitering outside the study.
I forced myself to continue walking past the open doorway and, as I did, I stuck my head in and called out, ‘Dad, dinner! Oops! Sorry!’ pretending to only then see that he was engaged on the phone.
He nodded and motioned with his hand for me to close the door but he didn’t look like he was suspicious of me.
I practically held my breath until he finally came to the table but he only said in passing to Mum, ‘Sorry, love, business call. This looks wonderful...’ and that was an end to it, as if it didn’t warrant mentioning at all. But I felt like I’d sidestepped a minefield and, at the first opportunity after Jasmine and Alex had left the table, I excused myself.
Later that night I knocked on Fi’s door. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, engrossed in the photos of Satis House. Her face looked troubled but I had troubles of my own as I said, ‘Fi, I’ve got a problem and I need your help.’
She made room for me to sit down on the plush beige carpet of her bedroom floor, pushing aside the photos into a pile. Surprisingly, there was one I did not see her take – it was a close up of the stranger who had confronted us. I’m sure my brow furrowed and, following the direction of my gaze, she quickly placed the image at the bottom of the stack.
‘What’s the problem?’ she asked.
I summarised what I’d heard earlier and informed her of my plan to visit the British Museum on Tuesday and try to sneak a peek at the artefact again, maybe even try to take a couple of photos of it.
‘But here’s the thing,’ I said with hopeless frustration, ‘exactly how am I going to achieve this? I can’t just waltz into Conservation and pretend that I got lost somehow. No one’s going to buy that.’
Fi gasped at my words, grabbing me by the shoulders, ‘You can’t but I can! Well, you can but as me!’
‘Huh?’ I asked confused.
‘You just said that no one’s going to believe it if you got lost in the museum which is true – everyone knows you there. But I’ve barely ever set foot in the museum – so there’s your answer. You can be me. It’s brilliant!’ Her voice was thick with excitement.
‘You’re crazy! We haven’t swapped identities since ... since...’ I paused, thinking hard.
‘...since Sean Reilly,’ she said, finishing my sentence.
I groaned, ‘Oh God! Don’t remind me!’
Sean Reilly. How could I have forgotten?
Sean Reilly had been a big mistake. Tall, good-looking, a high-achiever, sociable, introduced through a friend – he’d met most of my stringent qualifications for potential boyfriends. That is, until we went on our first date. The guy was an octopus. He couldn’t keep his hands to himself. They were everywhere and I kept having to push them – and him – away. For weeks after that disastrous first date he kept calling, until Fi decided to deal with him for me – by pretending to be me. I never found out how she actually dealt with him but he never came near me afterwards – nor, come to think of it, did any of his friends.
When it came to guys, Fi was so self-assured. She usually did the heart-breaking. She wasn’t romantic like me and would scoff at my dreams of meeting a Mr Darcy or Edward Cullen.
‘I’m never going to be able to pull it off!’ I said, shaking my head in denial.
Fi gave me a look. ‘Rubbish! Even our own parents can barely tell us apart!’
‘They can tell us apart!’
‘That’s only because your head’s always in a book!’ she countered.
‘Fi! The idea’s stupid! It’ll never work!’ I said acerbically, jumping up to storm out of her room.
She caught my arm before I could leave, swinging me round to face her. Her eyes were wide with appeal, ‘Look, trust me. No one’s ever going to know.’
And, fool that I was, that’s why I found myself on Tuesday afternoon dressed in Fi’s clothing, carrying Fi’s camera, pretending to be Fi.
A mantra was running through my head as I approached Security, Gotta be bubbly, chatty, extroverted. Even then, I almost stuffed it up by addressing the guy at the counter by his given name.
‘Hi Stanley,’ I gasped, quickly trying to cover up my gaffe, ‘Sage told me to ask you for a Visitor’s Pass so I can drop in on Dad ... I mean, Professor Woods.’
Stanley looked puzzled. I kept smiling inanely at him and his face eventually cleared, ‘Yeah, okay. Identical twins, right?’ I smiled in agreement, ‘So you’re...?’
‘Saffron,’ I replied. Bubbly, chatty, extroverted. ‘I was just doing some Christmas shopping – don’t you just love Harrods? – and I remembered that Dad was gonna leave early from work today and thought I’d drop by to see if I could catch a lift home. It’s like freezing out there.’
Oh God! I was overdoing it! I sounded like an idiot! I thought, trying hard to stop myself from grinning stupidly at Stanley out of sheer nerves.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed, getting me to forge Saffron’s name on a form, ‘looks like we might be in for some snow this year.’
‘That’d be so cool! We haven’t had a white Christmas since Sage and I were seven when we lived in Stockholm. We used to go skiing in our holidays.’
‘Sounds nice, I suppose. Me and the missus prefer to take our holidays in sunny Spain. You any good at it? I can’t imagine your sister skiing – she doesn’t seem much of the outdoorsy type,’ Stanley said, jokingly.
I simply nodded in agreement, feeling slightly offended. It wasn’t like he even knew me – he’d only seen me a couple of times around the museum!
Stanley finally handed me the Pass and, for good measure, I asked him for directions to Dad’s office. Waving him goodbye, I was through the door in an instant. I breathed in relief at passing my first hurdle and wished this whole ordeal to be over. It was so much harder than the spy novels made it seem.
Conservation was located on the same corridor as Dad’s office but situated at the opposite end so pretending to be lost could just work – a simple matter of turning left instead of right. The museum had the latest in wireless camera surveillance, so I deliberately made myself pause now and again as if I was trying to remember the way, just in case anyone was watching the security monitors. I was concerned about getting into Conservation – I knew Dad’s password for the keypad lock as I’d seen him punch it in numerous times before, but it would be a lot harder to explain how I got into a locked room should anybody spot me.
I rounded the last corner and stopped. There was still enough time to pull out of this crazy plan and simply head down the corridor to Dad’s office. But I decided to go through with it as it was my only chance to look at the artefact again and, turning left, reached the locked entrance to Conservation.
I almost had a heart attack when the door suddenly opened in front of me with a sound like air being compressed in a pump. I jumped back in alarm but still couldn’t avoid the conservator who barrelled straight into me. He wasn’t a tall man but he was solidly built, so it felt like I’d walked into a brick wall. I caught a brief glimpse of pale blue eyes framed by bushy eyebrows and a nose that might have been broken playing football. When he reached to steady me he used more force than was necessary and I found myself pressed up against his chest. He immediately let me go, equally alarmed and profusely apologetic. In all the confusion he didn’t seem to notice that I didn’t belong there, instead he held the door open for me to pass through, muttering another apology for good measure, before hurrying down the corridor as if he was being chased by fiends from hell.
They mustn’t let them get out much, I thought, watching him disappear.
At first glance the room appeared to be empty – a darkened laboratory with several glass-walled enclosures – but I saw movement in one of the chambers at the far end. I knew what they were, of course; hermitic vaults. Heat and humidity eroded ancient papyrus, parchment and vellum and proper preservation required they be placed in air-tight cubicles that kept out humidity and natural acids in the air. Conservation of an artefact also required eliminating insect life – for large scale artefacts they used a technique of oxygen deprivation where the artefact was loaded into a fumigation chamber, which was then purged with nitrogen gas to remove all the oxygen, and left there for two weeks in order to ensure that all stages of insect life wer
e killed off. Artefact conservation was both interventive and preventative which required chemical, electrochemical or mechanical processes to stabilise an object, concentrating on minimising damage.
Often the stabilisation of an organic artefact, such as those composed of ivory or bone, required a tripartite process – cleaning and documentation, consolidation and often desalination, and drying. The most important thing was to avoid placing stress on the artefact leading to cracking, warping or collapse of the original surface by failing to treat it correctly. From what Dad had told me, synthetic polymers and vacuum-freeze drying were often used to ensure an artefact remained in near-perfect condition.
I found entering these air-tight cubicles a slightly unsettling experience with oxygen regulated from outside the chamber usually by a technician on duty. But, luckily, I only needed to take a few photos and I was prepared to do this standing outside the hermitic vault as I didn’t want to compromise the condition of the artefact. I just hoped it wasn’t in the chamber where the conservator was working, though I knew I’d need to be quick about it – there wasn’t a technician on duty today and that could only mean that either the conservator wasn’t going to be in the chamber long or that the technician would be coming back soon. Maybe he was the guy I’d bumped into at the entrance. I wasn’t going to take any chances.
I must have had a guardian angel watching over me because the artefact was in the first chamber I looked into. Through the glass I could see it resting in a tray placed on the counter in the middle of the vault. Even at this distance I could feel its seductive power. The temptation to enter the vault and touch it was almost overwhelming and it took every bit of my willpower to resist. But I did resist and, fiddling with the camera, managed to position it against the glass at an angle that would help minimise any reflective glare to take a few careful shots.