Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “En conséquence tonight when I saw the poor misguided mademoiselle about to make a sacrifice of herself to that four-faced caricature of Satan I called to mind the greeting to the Lord Gautama which in olden days had rocked him and his kind from their high thrones, and raised the ancient battle cry of freedom once more. Tiens, he knew his master, that one. The Lord Gautama Buddha had driven him back to whatever hell-pool he and his kind came from in the olden days; his strength and power to drive him back was still potent. Did not you see it with your own four eyes, my friends?”

  “U’m,” I admitted somewhat grudgingly. “You think it was the power of the Green God that called Melanie back to The Light of Asia tonight?”

  “Partly, beyond question. She wore his ring, and material things have great power on things spiritual, just as spiritual things have much influence on the material. Also it might well have been a case of utter frustration. She might have said in effect, ‘What is the use?’ Her lover had been killed, her hopes of happiness blasted, her whole world knocked to pieces. She might well have reasoned: ‘I am powerless to fight against my fate. The strength of the Green God is too great. I am doomed; why not admit it; why struggle hopelessly and helplessly? Why not go to Kabanta and admit my utter defeat, the extinction of my personality, and take whatever punishment awaits me, even though it be death? Sooner or later I must yield. Why not sooner than later? To struggle futilely is only to prolong the agony and make his final triumph all the greater.’ These things she may have said to herself. Indeed, did she not intimate as much to us when we interviewed her?

  “Yes,” he nodded like a china mandarin on a mantelpiece, “it is unquestionably so, my friends, and but for Jules de Grandin—and the Lord Gautama Buddha assisted by my good friends Trowbridge and Costello—it might have been that way. Eh bien, I and the Buddha, with your kind assistance, put an end to their fine schemes, did we not?”

  “You seriously think it was the force of the Green God that killed Wade Hardison?” I asked.

  “I seriously do, my friend. That and naught else. The Green One was a burning glass that focused rays of hatred as a lens does sunlight, and through his power the never-to-be-sufficiently-anathematized Kabanta was enabled to destroy the poor young Hardison completely.”

  He stabbed a small, impressive forefinger at me. “Consider, if you please: What was the situation tonight? Siva had triumphed. He had received a blood-sacrifice in the person of the poor young Hardison; he was about to have another in the so unfortunate Mademoiselle Melanie, then pouf comes Jules de Grandin and Friend Trowbridge and Friend Costello to repeat the chant which in the olden days had driven him from power. Before the potency of our chant to the Buddha the Green One felt his power ebbing slowly from him as he retreated to that far place where he had been driven aforetime by the Lord Gautama. And what did he do as he fell back? Tenez, he took revenge for his defeat on Kabanta. He cast the statue of himself—a very flattering likeness, no doubt—down from its altar place and utterly crushed the man who had almost but not quite enabled him to triumph. He was like a naughty child that kicks or bites the person who has promised it a sweet, then failed to make good the promise—”

  “But that idol was a senseless piece of carved stone,” I protested. “How could it—”

  “Ah bah, you irritate me, my friend. Of course the idol was a senseless piece of stone, but that for which it stood was neither stone nor senseless. The idol was but the representation of the evil power lurking in the outer darkness as the tiger lurks in ambush. Let us put it this way: The idol is the material and visible door through which the spiritual and invisible force of evil we call Siva is enabled to penetrate into our human world.

  “Through that doorway he came into the world, through it he was forced to retreat before the power of our denial of his potency. So to speak, he slammed the door as he retreated—and caught Kabanta between door and jamb. En tout cas, he is dead, that miserable Kabanta. We are well rid of him, and the door is fast closed on the evil entity which he and the unwitting and unfortunate Mademoiselle Melanie let back into the world for a short time.

  “Yes,” be nodded solemnly again. “It is so. I say it. I also say that I should like my glass refilled, if you will be so gracious, Friend Trowbridge.”

  Lords of the Ghostlands

  JULES DE GRANDIN PASSED the brandy snifter back and forth beneath his nose, savoring the bouquet of the fine champagne with the keen appreciation of a connoisseur. He took a light, preliminary sip, and his expression of delight became positively ecstatic. “Parbleu,” he murmured, “as my good friend François Rabelais was wont to say, ‘Good wine is the living soul of the grape, but good brandy is the living spirit of the wine,’ and—”

  “The devil!” Dr. Taylor broke in as a nervous movement of his elbow dislodged the bubble-thin inhaler from the tabourette beside his elbow and sent it crashing to the floor.

  “Quel dommage—what a pity!” consoled de Grandin. “To lose the lovely crystal is a misfortune, Monsieur, but the vieux cognac, he are priceless, to lose her are a calamity, no less!”

  “You’re not just saying that!” Dr. Taylor answered grimly. “That’s the last bottle of Jérôme Napoleon in my cellar, and heaven only knows when I’ll get a replacement. These things always seem to run in threes. This morning at breakfast I upset my coffee cup, this afternoon I nearly dropped a bit of absolutely priceless papyrus in the fire, now”—he broke off with a grimace of self-disgust —“I hope I’ve completed the cycle.”

  “One understands, Monsieur,” de Grandin nodded commiseratingly. “It is the times—the strain of war, the—”

  “We can’t blame this on the war,” Taylor denied. “I hate to confess it, but I’ve been jumpy as a bit of popcorn in a popper for the past few days. My goat’s gone.”

  “Comment?” de Grandin’s brows went up the barest fraction of an inch. “He was a valuable animal, this goat of yours, Monsieur?”

  Despite himself our host gave vent to a short laugh. “Very, Dr. de Grandin. Unless I get him back again I shall—oh, I’ll not pull your leg. To lose one’s goat is an American idiom meaning to become utterly demoralized. It’s that dam’ mummy that is driving me almost to distraction.”

  This time de Grandin was not to be caught napping. “Translate, if you will be so kind, Friend Trowbridge,” he begged. “Is it another of his idioms—is the mummy to which he refers a genuine cadavre, or perhaps a papa’s wife, or a mother—”

  “No!” Dr. Taylor held explosive laughter in by main force. “This is no idiom, Dr. de Grandin. I wish it were. The fact is that though I’m not superstitious I’ve had a bad case of the jitters since last week when they brought out a new mummy at the Museum. It had been greatly delayed in transit due to the war, and when it came it took us all by surprise. Several of our younger men have joined the services, so I took it in charge. I wish I hadn’t now, for unless I’m much mistaken it’s what’s called ‘unlucky,’ and—well, as I’ve said, I’m not superstitious, but . . .”

  “I should think that any mummy might be called unlucky,” I put in rather fatuously. “To be jerked out of the quiet restfulness of your grave and shipped across four thousand miles of water, then exhibited for people whom you’d call barbarians to gawk at—”

  My faint attempt at humor was completely lost on Dr. Taylor. “When an Egyptologist refers to a mummy as unlucky he has reference to its effect on the living, not to its peculiar luck or lack of it,” he cut in almost sharply. “Call it nonsense if you will—and probably you will—but the fact is there seems some substance to the belief that the ancient gods of Egypt have the power to punish those disturbing the mummies of people dying in apostasy. Such mummies are referred to in the trade as ‘unlucky’—unlucky for the people who find them or have anything to do with them. Tutankhamen is the classic example of this. He was a noted heretic in his day, you know, and had given great offense to the ‘Old Ones’ or their priests, which in the long run amounted to the same thing. So when h
e died, although they gave him an elaborate funeral, they set no image of Amen-Ra at the prow of the boat that ferried him across the Lake of the Dead, and the plaques of Seb, Tem, Nepthys, Osiris and Isis were not prepared to go with him into the tomb. Notwithstanding his belated efforts to be reconciled with the priesthood, Tutankhamen was little better than an atheist according to contemporary Egyptian theology, and the wrath of gods followed him beyond the grave. It was not their wish that his name be preserved to posterity or that any of his relics be brought to light.

  “Now, just consider contemporary happenings: In 1922 Lord Carnavon located the tomb. He had four associates. Carnavon and three of these associates died within a year or so of the opening of the tomb. Colonel Herbert and Dr. Evelyn-White were among the first to enter the tomb. Both died within twelve months. Sir Archibald Douglass was engaged to make X-rays of the mummy. He died almost before the plates could be developed. Six of the seven French journalists who went into the tomb shortly after it was opened died in less than a year, and almost every workman engaged in the excavations died before he had a chance to spend his pay. Some of these people died one way, some another. The fact is: They all died.

  “Not only that: Even minor articles taken from Tut’s tomb seem to exercise malign influence. There is proof absolute that attendants at the Cairo Museum whose duties keep them in or even near the room where Tutankhamen’s relics are displayed sicken or die—for no apparent reason. D’ye wonder that they call him an ‘unlucky’ mummy?”

  “Bien, Monsieur. Et puis?” de Grandin prompted as our host lapsed into moody silence.

  “Just this,” responded Dr. Taylor. “This mummy I’ve had wished on me is dam’ peculiar. It’s Eighteenth Dynasty work, that much is plain, but unlike anything I ever saw before. There is no face mask nor funerary statue, either on the mummy or in the coffin, and the case itself is bare of writing. The old Egyptians always wrote the titles and biographies of the dead upon their coffins, you know, but this case is just bare, virgin wood; a beautiful shell of thin hard cedar to which not even varnish has been applied. Most mummy case lids are held in place by four little flanges, two to a side, which sink into mortises cut in the lower section and are held in place by hardwood dowels. This case has eight, three to each side and one at each end. They must have wanted to make sure that whoever was fastened in that coffin wouldn’t break out. Furthermore—and this is more than merely unusual, it’s absolutely unique—the bottom of the coffin is strewn four inches deep with spices.”

  “Spices?” echoed Jules de Grandin.

  “Spices. Yes. We haven’t analyzed all yet, but so far we’ve identified clove, spikenard, cinnamon, aloes, thyme and ginger, mustard, capsicum and common sodium chloride.”

  De Grandin pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “This are unusual, vraiment,” he conceded. “And have you unwrapped him or perhaps X-rayed her?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  “Comment? Oui et non? Is this perhaps some of the famous double talk of which one hears so much?”

  “Not exactly,” our host grinned. “I meant to say that I’ve unwrapped the first layer of bandages, the crust or shell that’s plastered with bitumen, you know, and subjected the mummy wrapped in its inner bandages, to the fluoroscope—”

  “Yes? And then, Monsieur?” de Grandin prompted as Dr. Taylor paused so long it seemed he had no more to say.

  “That’s just it, Dr. de Grandin. It isn’t well at all. What I’ve found confirms my first suspicions that I’ve an ‘unlucky’ mummy on my hands.

  “Woeltjin, Dr. Oris Woeltjin, found this mummy in a cleverly hidden tomb between Nagada and Dêr El-Bahri, on the very eastern border of the Lybian Desert, territory given up as thoroughly worked over years ago. While they were excavating two of his fallaheen were bitten by tomb spiders and died in terrible convulsions. That in itself was unusual, for while the Egyptian tomb spider’s an ugly-looking brute, he’s not particularly venomous; I’ve been bitten by ’em half a dozen times and not suffered half as much as when stung by a scorpion. This must have impressed the rest of his workmen, too, for they deserted in a body, but Woeltjin stuck it out, and with the help of such neighborhood men as he could hire for double wages he finally reached the funerary chamber.

  “That was only the beginning. He had the devil’s own time getting down the Nile with it. Half the crew of his dahabeeyah came down with some sort of mysterious fever, several of ’em died and all the rest went overside, so it was almost two weeks before he’d finished a trip which in ordinary circumstances would have taken five days at most. The Egyptian government doesn’t let you take a mummy out these days, but Woeltjin was an old hand at the game. He wheedled where he could and bribed where he had to, and finally smuggled the thing out disguised as a crate of Smyrna sponges; got it as far as Liverpool, and died.

  “The mummy knocked around the wharves and warehouses at Liverpool for almost two years, the war kept it there still longer, but finally it arrived, and—believe it or not!—our shipping department actually took it for a lot of sponges and let it lie around our storeroom almost two more years. The curator discovered it purely by accident last week. Well, with that background, what I found yesterday just about confirmed my suspicions that the thing’s unlucky.”

  Jules de Grandin leaned forward in his chair. “Nom d’un million moustiques pestifères, Monsieur, what was it you discovered?” he demanded. “Me, I am consumed with curiosity.”

  Taylor smiled a trifle grimly. “The fluoroscope revealed the bony structure of the chest had been broken. Either she had died from an injury in what corresponded to the modern traffic accident, or”—he paused and took a sip of brandy—“she suffered death by a ritual roughly corresponding to the peine forte et dure of the medieval English criminal courts—crushed to death beneath a great pile of rocks, you know.”

  “But it might have been an accident,” I objected. “Those two-wheeled chariots of ancient days weren’t very stable vehicles, and it would have been quite possible—”

  “Possible, but not probable, in view of what the papyrus says,” Dr. Taylor cut in. “I found the sheet of writing tucked between two layers of bandages—surreptitiously, I’d say—just after I’d completed my fluoroscopic inspection.”

  De Grandin tweaked the needle-points of his small wheat-blond mustache. “Tiens, Monsieur, why do you torment us thus, making a long story still longer? What did it say, this twenty-times-accursed papyrus of yours?”

  ”Plenty,” Dr. Taylor answered. “I haven’t finished translating it, but even its beginning has an air of eerie mystery. She describes herself as Nefra-Kemmah, servant of the Most High Mother, the Horned One, the Lady of the Moon—in fine, a priestess of the Goddess Isis. You get the implication?”

  I shook my head; de Grandin leveled one of his unwinking cat-stares at our host, but made no answer.

  “The priestess of Isis, unlike the servants of all other Mother-Goddesses of ancient days—Aphrodite and Tanith, for instance—were vowed to chastity and were as completely celibate as Vestal Virgins or Christian nuns. If one of them forgot her sacred obligations even to the small extent of looking at or speaking to a man outside the priesthood the consequences were decidedly unpleasant. If she, as the saying goes, ‘loved not wisely but too well,’ death by torture was the penalty. This might take several forms. Burial alive, wrapped and bandaged like a mummy, but with the face exposed to permit breathing, was one form of inflicting the punishment. Another was to crush her erring heart to pulp beneath a great pile of stones. . . .”

  “Parbleu,” de Grandin murmured. “This poor one, then, was one of those unfortunates—”

  “All signs point to it. She was a priestess, vowed to chastity on pain of death; her ribs have been crushed in; her coffin bears no inscription, not even so much as a brush mark. It seems not only death, but oblivion had been her portion. Now, perhaps, you understand why I’m inclined to be jumpy. It’s all right to say ‘stuff and nonsense’ when you hear unluck
y mummies talked of, but any Egyptologist can cite instance after instance of ‘accidents’ occurring to those who come in contact with the mummies of those who died under interdict.”

  “What else did the papyrus say—or have you gotten any farther?” I asked.

  “Humph. The farther I get into it the more I’m puzzled. You know something of Egyptian medical ideas?”

  “A little,” Jules de Grandin admitted, “but I would not presume to discuss them with you, Monsieur.”

  Taylor smiled appreciation of the compliment.

  “They had some odd notions. They thought, for instance, that the arteries contained air, that the seat of the emotions was the heart, and that anger generated in the spleen.”

  “Perfectly,” de Grandin nodded.

  “But they were far in advance of their contemporaries, and even of the Greeks and Romans, for they had partly grasped the truth that reason resided in the brain. Remember that, for what comes next ties in with it.

  “The Egyptians were probably the first great people of antiquity to formulate a definite idea of immortality. That was their reason for mummification of their dead. They believed that when three thousand years had passed the soul returned to claim its body, and without a fleshy tenement to welcome it, it would have to wander bodiless and homeless in Amenti, the realm of the damned. As the Priestess Nefra-Kemmah lived during the XVIIIth Dynasty—roughly somewhere between 1575 and 1359 B.C., she should now be about ready—”

  “Ah?” murmured Jules de Grandin. “Ah-ha? You think—”

  “I don’t think anything. I’m only puzzled. Instead of praying to the gods to guide her wandering ka or vital principle back to her waiting body, Nefra-Kemmah asserts—states positively—she will rise again with the help of one who lives, and by the power of the brain. That is absolutely unique. Never before, to my knowledge, has such a thing been heard of. Even those who died apostate sought the pity of the gods and begged forgiveness for their sin of unbelief, beseeching divine assistance in attaining resurrection. This little priestess declares categorically she will rise again with the help of a living human being and by the power of the brain.” He drew an envelope from his pocket and scribbled a notation on it.