The White Book

by George Shadow

  “I didn’t show up in this hall.”

  “Great,” Aiden said in defeat.

  “There must be an escape passage or something,” Kimberley thought, turning from the door. “Come on; let’s feel the walls for cracks, slits and stuff.”

  “That will take ages,” Aiden complained.

  “So we better start now,” Kimberley told him. “Spread out.”

  People started banging on the door from outside as the trio fanned out inside the huge hall, feeling with their hands and searching with their eyes for any sign of a hidden contraption or a secret door.

  “Found it!” Rachel announced near the golden throne at the hall’s other end, and the others hurried to where she stood. An adult-sized gaping square opened into blackness beside her.

  “And you also opened it,” Aiden applauded. “Looks scary, though.”

  A swishing sound drew everyone’s attention to the middle of the hall. A lone figure emerged from smoke swirling around him and drew two daggers from his sides. This character wore a toga and a sleeveless shirt-like top. Red bands wound round his bulging arm muscles and his bald head shone whenever evening sunlight filtered into the hall from the long windows. Kimberley cursed softly.

  Carl Bain.

  “It’s him,” she said. “Aiden, take Rachel down that passage. Be careful in there for there could be some traps. I just hope you will find your way out of this building.” She took a burning reed torch from the wall above the secret exit and handed it to the boy. “Find the book and move on without me if I don’t show up.”

  Aiden looked depressed. “But...”

  “Go now,” Kimberley urged him. “I must defend you two here. There’s no other way.”

  Aiden nodded and took Rachel’s right hand.

  “We’ll see you again, Kim,” the little girl said as her older mate guided her through the secret door while holding up the torch.

  “I hope so,” Kimberley muttered, turning to face the present danger as she unsheathed the sword she still held.

  “Your reign is over, false queen!” her old foe said as he approached her. “Egypt will forever be grateful to me for killing you!”

  Kimberley laughed. The troubleshooter did not know who he was, thanks to the white book and the time shift. He must have even forgotten his cube.

  The cube.

  She wondered whether she still had it.

  “And you must return what you took from me before I kill you!” the man continued. “My new friends relish the thought of killing you now that the white book is not in sight!”

  He remembered.

  Kimberley drew back when flames sprang from the two daggers Carl Bain wielded. Six black forms appeared behind him and drifted towards her. She thought of Aiden and Rachel in the dark escape passage.

  “They will not go far, my love,” the man she knew to be Carl Bain chuckled. “My new friends have already gone after them, and the white codex.”

  “They will never submit to you,” Kimberley said, taking a defensive stance with her sword. When did she learn to do that? And what’s with her accent, and language? That didn’t sound like English, did it?

  Her assailant came at her, his long flaming daggers expertly thrusting forward in-between her swings and jabs, which he skillfully avoided. His six infernal companions formed a circle around the fighting duo, and Kimberley wondered what they were up to as she fought off wave after wave of fiery attacks from her opponent.

  * * *

  Aiden led Rachel down some stony steps, the flaming reed torch showing the way. Egyptian hieroglyphs dotted the illuminated walls as both kids descended lower and lower into the tunnel. This suddenly opened up into a sizeable room filled with all kinds of artifacts, and coffin-like structures.

  “I hate coffins,” Rachel said.

  “Me, too,” Aiden agreed. The shapes on the walls didn’t help the situation either, and he had to turn away from some very grotesque drawings. Rachel, on her part, didn’t look away like him despite all her talk about being scared of coffins, and he felt embarrassed by his behavior, though he still couldn’t stomach the sight of the images on the walls.

  “That door could be our only way out.” Rachel’s voice brought Aiden back from the world of coffins and bizarre images. The door she indicated had Egyptian symbols etched on its wooden surface.

  “Remember, Kim said we should be wary of booby traps,” Aiden said.

  “So far we’ve seen none,” Rachel pointed out, taking another step towards the door.

  “Rachel, no,” Aiden warned her. “I think that door is booby-trapped.” But his companion ignored him and took another step. Again, he thought she was showing bravery where he was exhibiting cowardly caution. “Well, maybe not,” he added, trying to save face.

  “We’ll have to find out by ourselves, won’t we?” Rachel said, walking up to the door. “Besides, I don’t think it’s...”

  The swishing sound interrupted her mid-sentence. She could only turn towards the thumps on the wall beside her. Fifteen arrows had just missed her en route to this wall, digging into the wooden block specifically placed on the wall to receive them should they miss their target.

  “Don’t move!” Aiden yelled, stopping in his tracks. “There could be more traps!”

  Rachel’s mouth remained open as she stared at the arrows embedded beside her. She could have been killed.

  “There’re markings on the ground.”

  “What?”

  “There’re symbols on the ground,” Aiden repeated. “And I can read these symbols, wow.”

  “What do they say?” Rachel asked him. She couldn’t look down for fear of setting off another trap.

  “It says we should...be afraid? That we are...are, that we’re...are now intruders...into...Cleopatra’s tomb? Ok, that’s not good.” Aiden had lost the little composure he thought he had left. He started looking around, fearing what could be lurking in the shadows created by the burning reed. Things like unknown booby traps and weirdities ready to spring out into the open once they took another step. “Cleopatra is not happy with us right now, Rachel,” he told his companion.

  “I know,” Rachel said. “What do we do now?”

  “I really don’t know. Why should she even set traps for people who never met her?”

  Light from the reed torch danced about, brilliantly creating more weird shapes on the surrounding walls. These bizarre silhouettes attacked the children’s imagination as they helplessly stood in the middle of the dead Egyptian queen’s tomb wondering what to do next.

  Aiden thought the black shapes all around might turn into the frightening unearthly demons after the white book and his pulse quickened. “We must get out now, Rachel,” he said.

  “How?” the little girl asked, rooted to the spot she presently occupied.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Aiden whispered. His attention had been drawn to one of the images on the wall beside him and he just stood there transfixed as he stared at it. Did it just move or was it the dancing flames of the reed torch that were playing games with his relevant faculties?

  It wasn’t the reed torch.

  The black shape before him moved again.

  “Oh, no!” he cried, drawing back. Sharp spikes sprang out behind his feet and he stopped cold.

  “Aiden!” Rachel cried when she saw the black apparition floating towards them. “They’re here!” She made to move forward, but more ancient spikes sprang up from the ground before her. “And we don’t have the book to protect us anymore!” she said in a shaky voice.

  Aiden took her hand with his free hand. Funny how she’d become scared all of a sudden, meaning that the situation they’d just stumbled into was a very dangerous one.

  Rachel drew closer to her companion as more Booklords emerged from the walls of the cavernous tomb and floated towards them. The dark emptiness these ominous spirits possessed as faces seemed to be drawing her mental essence farther into the oblivion within their bottomless souls, so she close
d her eyes and prayed to Yahweh. From the darkness now surrounding her, voices whispering in various languages and dialects wafted to her ears, and she realized she could understand every single word.

  “Bookbearer!”

  “Spare yourself this torture!”

  “Disown the book!”

  “It is useless to you.”

  “You will die now if you refuse!”

  “No, I will not!” the Jewish girl screamed, jolting Aiden into holding her more tightly with his left hand.

  “Rachel, what’s going on?” he whispered, beginning to sweat. The reed torch picked out more dark forms emerging from the darkness beyond. The Gray Ones were closing in from all sides and it looked like something sinister was about to happen. “Who’re you talking to?”Aiden asked the Jewish girl. He shook her when she did not respond. “What’s going on?”

  Rachel did not hear him. She’d been thrown into a world of voices trying to drive home one particular message. Disown the book and be saved from the calamity about to befall. She could not shut out the voices in her head, so she started praying over the cacophony they were making in order to suppress the growing urge to give in to their demand.

  Aiden started as the black forms around them lurched forward, and formed a tighter circle. He had almost let go of Rachel before realizing that he was feeling tired all of a sudden. His hand refused to obey him, though, and Rachel had to hold him as she recited a prayer in the tongue of her people. The reed torch slipped and fell on the rocky floor of the cave before his knees buckled and he slumped to the ground, Rachel still holding him.

  “Aiden!” Rachel cried, breaking her recitation to fall beside her co-traveler in consternation. He wasn’t breathing and several scary thoughts ran through the girl’s mind. Was he dead? Defiantly, she stood up and faced her aggressors.

  “Give us the book!”

  “You will die now if you refuse!” the voices kept up in Rachel’s head.

  “I will not fail!” she screamed, feeling weak. She stumbled and fell atop Aiden’s crumpled body, her eyes staring at the reed torch still burning on the tomb’s floor. A scarab beetle scurried past on the ground before her and she blinked back the tears forming at the corners of her eyes. She had failed her people.

  “Give us the book!”

  “Give us the book or you die!”

  “Give us the book!”

  “Give us the book!”

  “Disown the book!”

  The reed torch went out.

  “Give us the book!”

  “Disown the book!”

  “Give us the book!”

  “Disown the book!”

  “Disown the book!”

  “Disown the book!”

  “NOOOOOOO!” the little girl whispered, her eyes beginning to droop. She saw long black hands reach out for her arms and pull her up to her feet. Aiden lay at her feet, but they ignored him. Obviously, he was out of the picture if they had killed him, but if he still lived, he was useless to her as long as she did not have in her possession the only tool she could protect her life, and the lives of her newfound friends, with.

  Searing pain shot down her spine through the unearthly limbs holding her upright. Unimaginable forces forced her eyes open to stare into the blackest hollow she’d ever seen in her life.

  “Rachel, disown the book and live,” it whispered into her ears.

  “I won’t,” Rachel repeated, glaring at her instigator.

  “Listen to your uncle, Ezra,” the thing before her continued, Dr. Isaac’s face briefly appearing before her bordered by the bleakest gloom. “If you do not, you will still die and we will still take the book by force.”

  “We will blind you.”

  “And tear you limb from limb.”

  “And deliver your soul, as well as your friends’, to the Otherworld.”

  “No!” Rachel screamed.

  “Then you must die!” the demon leader before her whispered in Ezra’s voice.

  “Yahweh,” Rachel whimpered, “please help me!”

  Yet her eyes tore inwards and black death sipped into her soul. The Booklords lifted her above their heads so that she hung in mid-air overlooking their vast number packed into Queen Cleopatra’s huge tomb.

  Bright light tore into the infernal bodies of the congregated demons, peeling them away from the cave in one large swipe. The demon leader before Rachel disappeared before this unique light got to it, and the Jewish girl collapsed onto Aiden’s stiff body before slowly opening her eyes.

  A figure holding a shimmering reed torch stood before the door of carved Egyptian symbols. This man bent down towards her as she finally lost consciousness.

  * * *

  The glaring fire surrounding the long daggers hid their positions, its brightness occasionally burning into her eyes, but she kept up her swings until a lucky one caught her attacker in the arm.

  Carl Bain swore, but did not stop his thrusts, rather increasing the tempo. Kimberley remembered he now had the blessing of the Gray Ones as she started defending herself with her sword, blocking his powerful moves with calculated countermoves.

  “What’s the matter, man?” Kimberley mocked as she worked. “I thought Osiris gave you some strength in your previous life? Now, you cannot defeat a woman?”

  And Carl Bain smiled. “I wanted you to understand the meaning of defeat by experiencing how powerful you could be before losing everything!” With a wave of his hand, an unknown force pulled his opponent’s sword out of her hand and flung it as far away from her as possible. The weapon clattered to the temple’s stone floor near the hall’s main doors.

  Kimberley backed away from the man with the flaming daggers, feeling lethargic all of a sudden. “What have you done to me?”

  “Nothing, my former queen,” Carl Bain said, smiling as he drew nearer his opponent. “You look surprised by my magic. Yet you know from whence it came.”

  Kimberley looked up. The Gray Ones had made Aiden feel drowsy once. They had her surrounded at the moment. She fell on all fours and her opponent stood before her. Powerful hands grabbed her neck and forced her head to look up.

  “Where is it?” the American hustler growled.

  “Where is what?”

  “The package, you fool! Speak before I kill you.”

  “I–I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kimberley said. “Perhaps you mistake me for another from the afterlife.” She grinned and Carl Bain swore under his breath.

  Holding the Portwood police sergeant by the neck, he lifted her up into the air, smiling as her feet left the ground. “Enough of this Egyptian bullshit, my dear. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Now, where is the parcel the boy gave you at the police station back in Portwood?”

  “May Osiris forgive you,” Kimberley said with a straight face.

  She crashed into a wall and crumbled to the ground, cursing painfully as she spat out blood. “You claim to be one of them, Khabawsokar, yet you still use your old magic,” she accused her foe, frowning when she realized she just used a foreign language fluently. What was she even saying?

  “Yes, the Christians have allowed me to keep my magic, my dear,” Carl Bain agreed. “They know what it could do for them in the war against the old order.”

  “The order and cults protect the ways of our forefathers.”

  “The ways of the past, which are meant for epic tales and history!” Khabawsokar snapped, levitating the princess a second time with his magic.

  “Small wonder you cringe from their cross, which they willingly stole from us!” Kimberley choked, feeling unseen hands tightening their grip round her neck.

  “I don’t deal in petty symbols!” Carl Bain said with bloodshot eyes. “Now, for the last time, where is my package?”

  “I–I must have left it in Sierra Leone,” Kimberley stammered, drifting back into her old self. “It’s–It’s not in my possession right now.”

  “You lie!” Khabawsokar snarled. “You know where they kept the w
hite codex!”

  “The white what?” Kimberley was puzzled. “Wh–What has befallen us?” It looked like a set of alternate realities were playing out at the same time for them. Carl Bain was Khabawsokar and vice versa, and she was a princess whose name she was yet to find out. The Portwood police sergeant hoped that this was not a bad sign.

  “I must return to Sierra Leone with you and retrieve my parcel,” Carl Bain said.

  “I’d rather die than...follow you,” Kimberley said and her opponent shook her in anger and drew her close before shaking her again with his magic.

  “I can do all things now, you know,” the American hustler snapped. “My gray masters have given me power beyond all knowledge and we are...” He spotted something on Kimberley’s chest through an opening in the transparent dress she wore and reacted as he should by peeling away until he disappeared into thin air.

  Kimberley crashed to the ancient hall’s hard floor and looked around her in amazement as the Gray Ones surrounding their fight arena, the ‘masters’ Carl Bain had just finished praising, vanished with their protégé. She felt round her neck and touched a necklace she quickly brought up to her gaze.

  An ankh amulet was attached to the gold chain hanging round her neck.

  She’d been saved by a petty symbol.

  Chapter 10: Amenhotep and the Sons of Osiris

  THE image shimmered before her and grew twelve times its size to surpass whatever she’d earlier imagined. It drew nearer before stretching out a hand towards her face, and the little girl screamed at the top of her voice.

  “Princess, you are awake,” someone said in a foreign language before her and she opened her eyes, blinking twice. A young man holding a reed torch and wearing native Egyptian attire came into focus. He had a curious expression on his face.

  “Aiden,” Rachel remembered, beginning to sit up.

  “Ramses is fine, Princess Anippe,” the man said in the same language he had earlier introduced, placing a hand on her chest. “You need to rest now.”

  “But–But where is he?” Rachel demanded in English. “Who are you? What did you do to him, and...and what did you just say right now?”