In a few gnawing bites, it had torn Ed’s face off.
But even with nothing remaining but a bloody mass, he still moved with the mummy. Waltzing it across the floor toward a cage with an open door.
Grace saw Virginia move fast. With lightning dexterity. She worked through the keys on the ring. In ten seconds she had both padlocks open.
Then the cage door crashed open.
Not stopping to look back she ran.
Grace glimpsed her face, wild with terror, loom close to her own. Then she was gone through the doorway and out into the wood.
“Help me, Grace… my legs don’t feel right,” Pix pleaded.
But Grace had to see what happened to Ed. He’d sacrificed himself to save them.
Ed had managed to carry the mummy as far as the cage, but didn’t have the strength to push it in. He pressed it as hard as he could against the bars. They could have been a pair of lovers necking against a wall. He pressed the creature back hard. The creature held his head in both its hands while pushing its face against his in a grotesque parody of kissing.
But this was gnawing. Teeth ripped. Crushed. Tore.
Grace heard the ripping of muscles and cracking of facial bones.
Blood pattered down to the concrete, pooling in a slick mass that reflected the lights above.
Then Ed’s legs lost their strength. A moment later his arms dropped by his side.
Still gnawing at his face, the mummy didn’t let him go as he slowly folded down to the floor.
“Come on!” Grace pulled Pix to her feet, then gripping her hand so hard that the girl cried out in pain, she dragged her outside.
Then she ran.
She didn’t stop running until they were both back at the pickup.
When she started the motor, Pix managed to rouse herself groggily. “Where now…”
“Home,” Grace panted. “We’re damn well going home.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
While Tag drove, Susan sat beside him. Geoffrey lay snug and asleep in his baby seat in the back of the car. The journal rested lightly on her lap. Susan skimmed it by flashlight, looking for the first mention of Amara.
She was halfway through the journal before she noticed the words “sarcophagus” and “mummiform.”
“Here we go,” she said, and began to read. “ ‘… the mummy beneath him. A portion of its head was visible. I saw its red hair, its eyeless sockets; I had the impression, for a moment, that it was kissing the dead man’s neck.’”
“Charming,” Tag said.
“ ‘I raised the man’s head. The mummy’s head also lifted, and I realized its teeth were buried in the throat.’”
“Same M.O.,” Tag commented.
Susan read silently for a while. “ ‘The bride of Set,’” she finally said. And then: “ ‘She will arise from the dead to seek the blood of her slayers.’” She read more in silence. “Callahan wants to take her out of the tomb.”
“That was his first mistake.”
“ ‘You have broken the seal of Osiris guarding the doorway. Its magic is destroyed. Without it, Amara will walk the night.’ The seal. Remember the gold disks on the coffin? Same idea. We had written instructions left by Callahan. They said that on no account should we tamper with them, but they were already broken when the coffin was delivered. Without the seals, she walks the night.”
“Pretty damned hard to swallow, Susan.”
“Your own police officers claim she killed these people.”
“I just can’t believe that someone who’s been dead almost four thousand years—or four seconds—can be walking around murdering everyone in sight. I mean, can you?”
“I don’t know.”
Tag flicked his turn signal. Its quiet clicking was the only sound in the car as he steered up a long, curving off-ramp.
“On the other hand,” he said. “Damn. On the other hand, there wasn’t any evidence at all of any human presence. And plenty to support the idea that Gonzalez and Beckerman were attacked by the Goddamn mummy. Gonzalez obviously shot it. His fingernail scrapings… I mean, there are certainly a few ways to explain all that. We’ve been through them. But everything falls neatly into place if you accept the mummy as perpetrator.”
“Callahan’s death too.”
Tag nodded. “The business about the dogs always did sound suspicious. Where was the .22 he used to shoot them? I think the Burlingdale boys just jumped to the obvious conclusion, and didn’t worry about the discrepancies when they closed the case.”
“But Callahan knew about Amara.”
“Maybe he didn’t know the seals were broken. Or maybe he broke them himself for some reason.”
“A form of suicide?”
“Could be. He was old, his health failing, his wife recently killed. Maybe he just wanted to end it all.” Tag shrugged. “Or maybe he had a different reason for breaking the seals. Could’ve done it, I suppose, to sic Amara on the robbers.”
“That could be it. Something sure made them leave in a hurry—and empty-handed.”
She shined the flashlight onto the journal and flipped through a few pages. Then the car turned a corner. Spinning red and blue lights flashed on her face, and she saw four police cars on the road ahead. They were double-parked, blocking half the street. A coroner’s van sat in the driveway of a house on the left, its rear doors open. Another van, this one marked Eyewitness News, blocked a driveway across the street.
Susan saw people everywhere: in clusters on the sidewalk; a couple strolling directly in front of the house, glancing toward it as if only casually interested; others peering out of windows and doorways of nearby houses.
At this time of night, she told herself. It was the early hours of the morning, but the lure of a crime story had drawn enough people out of their houses to fill the sidewalks as if it were the middle of the afternoon.
On a lawn, somebody was being interviewed by a TV newsman. The camera lights lit the scene vividly.
“Looks like Vasquez,” Tag said. He drove slowly past the patrol cars and parked.
They climbed from the car. Geoffrey stirred in Susan’s arms as she eased him from his baby seat. The lights flashed against his shut eyes. She pulled the comforter so it hung over his face.
They were halfway up the driveway when a voice called, “Miss Connors! Susan Connors!”
“Oh, damn,” she muttered.
Tag grinned. “You’re already a celebrity.”
A short, curly-haired man hurried toward her, followed by a man with a mini-cam on his shoulder, another with a glaring light.
“Lenny Farrel, Eyewitness News.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Miss Connors, are tonight’s killings related to the recent disappearance of the mummy from the Charles Ward Museum?”
“There appears to be a connection. That’s why I’m here.”
“Did the police request your presence?”
“Yes.”
“What would be the nature of the connection?”
“No comment.”
“We’ve heard speculation that tonight’s killings were committed by someone resembling the missing mummy, Amara. Do you give credence to such speculation?”
“Do you?”
“According to a reliable source, a patrolman reported over the air from his radio car that he confronted a suspect near the crime scene and that said suspect conformed to descriptions of the mummy.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Before you go, Miss Connors, would you care to elaborate on your role with…”
“Excuse us,” Tag said, stepping between the newsman and Susan. With an arm around her shoulders, he led her away.
They entered the house. Vasquez followed them inside and shut the door. Susan glimpsed several men near a woman’s body. She looked away.
“What’d you tell that SOB?” Vasquez asked.
“Nothing. He seemed to know plenty, though.”
; “Kraus spilled his guts over the radio. Every bastard in town with a police scanner thinks we’ve got a homicidal mummy on the loose. The mayor’s gonna go crazy.”
“What do you think?” Susan asked.
“I think we’d better get our hands on a suspect fast and it better not be a Goddamn zombie.” He looked around. “Kraus, haul it over here.”
A thin, gray-faced policeman hoisted himself from a sofa. He came across the room, squinting through the smoke of a cigarette pinched between his lips. As he reached the group, he took out the cigarette. “Yessir.”
“Kraus, this is Susan Connors from the museum. You want to tell her what you saw?”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
Vasquez’s eyes narrowed. “Give it your best shot.”
Kraus dragged on his cigarette. “I think it was the mummy.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Vasquez said. “Describe it.”
“Well…” He sighed, blowing smoke out his nose. The skin around his eyes was red, sore-looking. “I pursued the suspect into the alley. I’d say it was a female, five foot four, red-haired. Long, right down her back. Reached her legs. Very thin, like a… like a pile of bones.” His shaking hand poked the cigarette between his lips. He stared at the bundle in Susan’s arms. His right cheek began to twitch.
“Tell her about the eyes,” said Vasquez.
“Didn’t have any. Just… empty sockets. I saw right into her head. Like the head was empty… just a shell, you know?”
“What else?”
“Well, there were these holes. In her chest and back. But no blood or anything. They looked like bullet holes. Some of them did. She looked as if she’d been stitched up across here.” He ran his finger across his belly. “Clumsy-looking job of it too.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“She was naked.”
“What else?”
Kraus shrugged. His eyes were still fixed on Geoffrey. “Is… Is that a baby you’ve got there?”
Susan nodded.
“Christ, that isn’t… Not the one she had?”
Susan frowned, confused.
“The suspect was carrying a baby,” Vasquez explained. “The McLeash child. We had three fatalities at their place. Baby-sitter, her boyfriend, and a kid. The baby’s missing. Apparently our suspect grabbed her.”
“Killed her,” Kraus said.
Susan felt sick. She took deep breaths, trying to control her sudden dizziness and nausea.
“Okay, Kraus. Tell her what happened after you confronted the suspect.”
He tapped a length of ash into his open palm. The palm was shiny with sweat. “Well… it ran up the alley. South. With the dead baby. Brown went in pursuit, and I returned to the car to call for backup.”
“And did a fine botch of it.”
“Yessir,” he said. The ash turned muddy in his wet hand.
“Where’s this Brown?” Susan asked.
“Someone knocked him cold. Probably the perp. The doc says we won’t be able to talk to him until the morning.”
“And there’s no sign of the mummy now?”
“We’ve given the alley a search. Our men came up with zip. Right now my men are combing the field by the museum. The alley led right to it. Maybe they’ll come up with something.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Amara held the baby by one arm, dangling at her side, its feet swinging so close to the ground, they caught the dirt every now and again, raising a puff of dust. Moonlight cascaded through the branches.
Once Amara stopped in one of the silver beams to gaze up at the moon. Her shining hair fell back from her head, cascading down, her back. Her eyeless sockets admitted the lunar radiance to her empty skull. Her lips peeled back from the teeth in a silent snarl.
A wild dog howled somewhere in the distance.
Amara stayed, allowing the moonlight to bathe her face. That she walked on.
After a little while, the canyon ended. It opened out into fields. Beyond the fields lights burned in streets. She walked faster; sometimes during her progress through the undergrowth, bushes tugged at the baby. Each time, she kept walking.
She joined a trackway that ran through the fields.
She wasn’t far away now. She could sense it.
Felt its pull.
Amara walked faster.
Soon.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
“Momma’s gonna kill me,” Mabel said from the backseat. They were her first words in nearly fifteen minutes.
“She doesn’t have to know,” Imad told her.
“She’s gonna know. That was her best knife. She’s gonna kill me.”
“I’ll buy her a new one.”
“Ain’t the same.”
“A knife is a knife.”
“This knife ain’t.”
“Oh?”
“John Wayne gave it to her.”
Imad glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “John Wayne? Really?”
“Back in 1958. She won it as a prize and John Wayne presented it.”
“That’s what she told you?”
“Sure, don’t you believe it?”
“It’s not for me to believe or disbelieve.”
“So she’s gonna kill me. It was a genuine bowie knife like cowboys use.”
“Mabel, whatever kind of knife it was, I was not about to let you bring it along.”
“Think I’d stab you?”
“It did indeed cross my mind.”
“You’re my friend, Imad.”
“Well, thank you.”
“Even if you do call me names and say I stink and won’t let me sit in front with you and hit me.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I don’t call you names.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Or say you stink.”
“I do not stink. I’ve always been particularly fastidious about personal hygiene. I expect others to be equally fastidious.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll teach you, Mabel.”
For a few moments there was silence. Imad took his foot off the gas, slowing as they approached the gate. The car’s lights shone against the tall ironwork.
“Imad?”
“Yes.”
“How come you’re being nice to me?”
“So you’ll allow me… now how do you put it? Allow me to prong you.”
She snorted. “That ain’t the reason. How come? Nobody’s ever nice to me. How come you are?”
He shrugged. “To atone for my sins perhaps.”
“You’re a sinner?”
“Indeed I am.”
“You a Catholic?”
“No.”
“Good thing. My momma, she’s against ‘em.” She leaned forward in the rear seat. “You won’t be Jewish then?”
“No, I am not.”
“Mohammedan?”
“No.”
“Must be something, Imad.”
“My mother’s family formed part of Egypt’s Coptic Christian community.”
“Coptic Christian?”
“That’s right.”
“Good,” she said, satisfied. “Momma never said nuthin’ against Coptic Christians.”
“I’m pleased to hear that.”
He pressed the remote button. The gates swung open. He drove through and the gates swung silently shut behind them. Ahead, the house was brightly lighted.
“What’s that?” Mabel asked.
“That, Mabel, is home.”
“Whose home?”
“Mine.”
“No shit.”
“It most certainly is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s not?”
“Is it?”
“It is.”
“Well, I’ll just squat.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
For more than an hour Grace Bucklan drove the pickup through the darkness. Its n
ose pointed east.
You shouldn’t run from monsters, she told herself. You should confront them.
I’m going home. I’m taking my sister home. I’m going to kick Mom’s boyfriend out of the house. If Mom or the molesting skunk protest, then they can just try explaining it all away to the cops.
Grace’s head was in a whirl. Images of the last couple of hours fired through her brain like machine-gun bullets.
Pix sat beside her in a daze, eyes staring into space. She had a bump on her forehead where she’d collided with the concrete floor in the chamber of horrors. But she didn’t seem badly hurt.
But maybe Grace wasn’t thinking straight.
Maybe she should tell the cops about what happened? About Ed and Cody. They’d been eaten alive back there. Now both were dead.
She might tell one day. She could even write the whole thing down in a book.
But not now.
Now all she wanted to do… longed to do… was to drive east.
They were going home. Leaving the madness behind.
Grace heard Pix give a horrified gasp.
“What’s wrong? Pix?”
Pix said nothing. Instead, she stared with horror at her hand as it lay open in her lap. Grace glanced down.
She saw strands of copper there, shining in the light from the dashboard.
It was hair from the creature’s head. The shank of hair was close to three feet long. Pix must have yanked it from the mummy when she launched herself on its back as it attacked Cody.
Hell, there were even shreds of black matter at the ends of the hair where the godforsaken stuff had rooted into the scalp.
Grace wound the window down, snatched the copper hair from Pix’s hand, and tossed it out. For a second it stayed with them, pulled by the slipstream of the truck.
It’s following…
Grace floored the accelerator. In the mirror she glimpsed the hair writhe in the moonlight before slowly spinning down to lie on the road.
With the last trace of the thing gone from their lives, Grace eased off the gas. She glanced at Pix. Her sister sat with her eyes closed. A tear rolled down her cheek.
Grace’s own eyes pricked. When she touched one with her knuckle, it came away glistening wet.
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