Elise and The Butcher of Dreams

by Steven Welch

  There were signs everywhere written in Arabic, English, and Mandarin. Toilets, Second Level, Gift Shop, Tutankhamen.

  The Royal Hall of Mummies, with an arrow pointing left.

  “That’s it.”

  THE PANTHEON

  Dominic caught only a glimpse of the big woman who had killed fourteen of his men as she stalked the burning ruins of the damned academy under the street. She was a nightmare, that woman, and she was coming for him, that he knew for sure.

  So, Dominic ran hard and fast down Rue St. Jacques, the avenue that cut through the heart of the Sorbonne.

  The sun was coming up and the flashes of light struck him as he ran up the boulevard, the school to his left and right, the pale gray stone of its buildings a warm red in the morning light.

  He was not wounded, but he was tired and he was frightened.

  That big woman was coming for him because she had told him so as he bolted out of the hatch in the street that led out onto the Left Bank of the Seine.

  How had this gone to hell in a hand-basket so fast?

  He stopped and looked back.

  Nothing. Nobody followed him, not the big woman, nobody.

  Rue St. Jacques ran down to the Seine, a wide street on the Left Bank where, before The Turn, students and academics and tourists mingled along its many cafes and restaurants and bookstores. He could see the river from where he stood, and just ahead was the massive Pantheon, where some of the most legendary figures in the history of France were buried, where Foucault’s Pendulum still swung, because this part of the city was spared the destruction of The Turn.

  Dominic had never traveled outside of the United States before they flew their ship of Sky Jellies across the Atlantic.

  He’d never even been to Canada, because, after all, America was the best and most important place on Earth so why in the hell should he go anywhere else?

  He was surrounded by the brilliance of the great architect Hauptmann, immersed in the history of The City of Light, and he could breathe the same air savored by revolutionaries and artists from across the centuries.

  Dominic did not care.

  As there was a murderous woman with a gun chasing him, his disinterest was understandable.

  Dominic could not see her but he knew she was out there. Somewhere.

  I need to run.

  His heart was pounding and he could barely breath.

  I need to rest. Just for a second.

  He walked as quickly as he could toward the Pantheon, looking over his shoulder and all around as he went.

  There was a gun in his right hand but he’d fired all of its bullets and now he hoped that it would be useful as a feint, as an illusion, as a decoy.

  The pigeons once more called the city home and a few of them scattered as he made his way into the great black maw of the Pantheon’s entrance.

  His footsteps were so loud on the tile floor. He tried to walk carefully, to be more quiet, but Dominic’s breathing was so loud and labored that it sounded as if a wounded moose in tap shoes was making its way into the building.

  I just need to rest. Just for a second.

  The cavernous interior of The Pantheon was dark except for the morning light that spilled in through windows set high in the space.

  There was a tall, thin line that descended from the ceiling and at the end of it was a golden globe.

  Dominic considered it briefly, then dismissed the pendulum.

  Not important. It’s nice and cool in here. Need to rest.

  He couldn’t slow his breathing and that worried him.

  What if I have a heart attack in here?

  Well, does it really matter, he thought. Everyone is dead. What the hell am I going to do, anyway?

  I need to find Jack. He’ll come back for me. Or I’ll track him down. I need to find Jack.

  But first I’m going to rest in here.

  The marble floor led down into dark, cool chambers that seemed carved from the white stone. She would never find him here, thought Dominic. That big bitch will never find me down here.

  There was a name carved in stone on the side of a massive section of rock. Victor Hugo. That sounded familiar to Dominic, but he wasn’t sure if the man had been a writer or a painter or a mime.

  He curled up against the cold tomb of Victor Hugo and checked his pulse with his fingertips.

  Damn. Not good. Need to breathe deep and calm down.

  His eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  This is a vault? Like, a cemetery vault? Perfect, Dominic thought, and he managed a laugh.

  “Something funny?”

  The voice was a woman’s. She had a thick European accent, and she was close. Dominic felt his skin go cold.

  The flashlight hit him then. His eyes hurt and he covered them with his arm.

  “I don’t think there’s anything funny about this,” the big woman said. Dominic raised his gun.

  “You’re out of bullets. Or at least, I think you are. Besides, you can’t see me, you can only see the light from this flashlight. Am I right?”

  “Got bullets,” said Dominic, “but yeah, I can’t see you. But I can hear you, bitch. I can shoot what I can hear.”

  “Why did you do this?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s your name?”

  Dominic’s brain raced. Need to stall long enough to figure out a way to get to her. I can take her down, just need time.

  “My name is Dominic. Who are you?”

  The big woman was silent and Dominic felt that the silence was not a good sign.

  “Hey,” he said, “you want to know why? Well, you’re not stupid. You’re old enough to know what things were like before, so let’s - ”

  He did not finish the thought. Dominic never had a chance to stall or trick or figure out a way to escape.

  The gun was loud and the burst from the barrel was bright and the back of Dominic’s head splashed against the crypt of the great Victor Hugo.

  Everything that had been Dominic was gone.

  Zuzu sat down on the marble floor and felt terribly sleepy.

  “I don’t care who you are,” she said, “I just know what you did.”

  She screamed with rage and pain then. Zuzu raged for her dead friends and for the devastation done to her home. She raged most of all because she knew the one they called Jack the Dream Butcher was on his way to meet Elise and nothing could be done to stop him.

  “Elise is strong, you bastards. Strong enough for you.”

  Her voice broke.

  “Strong enough.”

  The stone of Victor Hugo’s crypt was cool. She rested against it. There was a scrap of paper in her vest. She scribbled some words with the blood from her wounds and set the paper aside.

  The pain faded. Warmth washed over her.

  Victor Hugo wrote such wonderful stories, she thought. He was among the first of us, of Les Scaphandriers, and I’m glad he rests in such an honored place. His was a life well owned.

  Zuzu closed her eyes and felt the cold sea on her face as the ship heaved below her against the waves. Her father’s voice told her to pull in the lines. So she did.

  The ocean is rough this morning but I would have it no other way.

  Mother el-Noori found Zuzu’s body the next morning. The el-Noori family wept for the woman who had saved their child. They carefully tended to Zuzu and together, the el-Noori brought the body of this strange, important woman back along the Seine and to the smoldering remains of L’Académie.

  There, in the ashes of wonders, survivors came out to take Zuzu home.

  THE ALADDIN VAULT

  There were no windows in the Royal Hall of Mummies so there was no light. Beyond the arched entrance door was just a wall of blackness. The glow worms had not found their way into the room. The still air stank of wet newspaper and rotten fish.

  Elise pulled out her flashlight, twisted the handle to give it some juice, then clicked the switch. A beam of light cut through the darkness, through thic
k curtains of dust motes, and revealed glass cases that lay horizontal on platforms. The beam was too tight so Elise adjusted the light for a broader throw.

  There were dark objects in the glass cases. She heard Taariq make a sound much like a gasp.

  She led the way into the room. At least twenty of the glass cases were spread out over a space as big as a banquet hall. Elise and Taariq stood next to the first. She trained the light through the glass.

  A thin face stared back at them. The skin was black and brown, like burnt paper, and the face was a gaunt scream, devoid of fat and tissue. Dark brown fabric shrouded the body and the two skeletal hands, claws really, were held at the thing’s chest as if in prayer.

  There was a large plaque on a metal stand next to the mummy case and on it, in English and Arabic, was the story of the dead woman who stared back at them in the flashlight’s beam.

  This had been Hatshepsut, the fifth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Elise considered the woman and her life. What power she must have held and what enemies she must have made along the way.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” said Taariq, “why are the bodies in here? What happened to them? What’s this all about?”

  Elise considered for a moment. She was familiar with movies about mummies and she’d read books in history class about ancient Egypt. She learned even more when she had become Scaphandrier.

  Taariq knew none of these things.

  “Ancient Egypt was a kingdom, many years ago. Impressive place. They didn’t just bury their dead, they geared them up for what they believed happened after death. They prepared them for their voyage to the next world. So, these are important ancient Egyptians who were preserved. Called mummies.”

  “Looks like they didn’t make it to the next world,” Taariq said.

  “No, doesn’t look like it.”

  They moved through the darkness, their boots making soft sounds on the dusty old tiles.

  Something slithered quickly in the blackness. Elise and Taariq froze for a moment and listened. Whatever it was, went silent.

  “We need to find the one called Ramesses II,” said Elise.

  Taariq nodded yes but the plaques with words were a mystery to him, just strange lines in no clear order. He did not know why but he could not find the voice to tell Elise that he couldn’t read.

  Elise moved carefully and quietly, case to case, and finally stopped before one with a large plaque and extra material printed on the side of the marble platform.

  Ramesses II, the long dead Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, rested in his long glass coffin. He was taller than the others but had the same burnt paper skin and clawing, prayerful hands.

  Elise looked at Taariq and smiled. She turned back to the glass.

  “This is the guy who gave Moses a hard time. Kind of amazing, really,” she said.

  “Moses?”

  “White beard, commandments, parted the ocean which I thought was stupid when I was eight years old but maybe not so much, all things considered. An old story. I saw a movie about him once. Fell asleep. The actor was a gun nut. Did an old movie where he went to a planet and the apes were in charge. I liked that movie better. Doesn’t matter.”

  She walked around the glass case that held the mummy of the Pharaoh.

  “Millions of people came through here to look at this guy. I doubt there’s a handle or a latch or a button that’s within reach. What the hell do I do?”

  She spoke into the wrist gadget.

  “I found Ramesses. Now what?”

  Nothing.

  “I found Project Aladdin.”

  Nothing.

  “I found The Vault.”

  “Congratulations, do you want a macaron for your troubles? You and every tourist in Cairo have discovered the entrance to The Vault. Now you must find a way inside. I’m waiting. I suspect you will fail. And please, no photography.”

  Elise closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Well, this is a pain in the ass.”

  She pulled her gun from its holster and slammed the butt against the glass. The noise was a shock in the silence of the space but the glass was thick and it did not break. It didn’t even chip. She tried again with more force. The noise rattled and echoed against the marble floor and around the walls.

  The slithering sound slithered again, louder this time, as if something was disturbed by the banging.

  Taariq looked back to the entrance door to the room.

  “Too loud,” he said.

  Elise ignored him and inspected the case where she’d struck. There was a tiny nick in the glass and nothing more.

  She pushed against the case with all of her strength. It didn’t budge. She paced around the marble platform. No latches, no levers, nothing but smooth stone. She pushed and pulled on the brass pole that held the interpretive plaque. It was solid.

  “Stupid,” she murmured.

  Elise sat down onto the cold floor and put her head in her hands. Jules spread a soft pool of green light that would have been comforting if it hadn’t revealed the green snake-like creature that reared up in front of her and hissed, its face a riot of teeth and tongues.

  Taariq screamed. Elise stared at the thing but it had no eyes so there would be no staring contest.

  She pulled her weapon and fired once. The creature became a cloud of blue mist and dropped dead to the floor.

  The gunfire deafened them for a moment so they did not hear something rattling in the distance, outside of the mummy room. They didn’t hear, but they felt the floor shake as if a train passed.

  Elise rubbed her ears. They were numb, ringing. She put her hand on the floor. Yes, something large was shambling in the rooms beyond.

  Her head snapped up. Taariq kicked her in the leg.

  “We need to go,” he said, “if you don’t figure this out right now we need to hide.”

  Her hearing was coming back and his voice cut through the buzz.

  “Got it,” Elise said, “I’ve figured it out.”

  No photography. Jules Valiance was a bastard.

  She scrambled to her feet and aimed her wrist device at the glass case.

  The Aengus was many things and one of them was a camera. Elise pushed a little black button. There was an audible click as it snapped a photo and sent an infrared signal to a receiver within the marble case.

  “Welcome to The Vault of the Aladdin Project, mon amie,” said Jules Valiance as the huge marble base and the glass case that held the mummy of the Pharaoh Ramesses shuddered and shifted. Blasts of air exploded from hidden vents around every side of the base.

  A shadow moved across the entrance to the mummy room and it was big enough to blot out the light from the museum beyond.

  Now they could hear and the sound was of something huge licking its wet lips. A moan of hunger and perhaps something more horrible.

  Elise and Taariq stepped back as the glass and marble platform spun and descended with a groan of gears and chains into the floor.

  Taariq looked back to the entrance to the room and there was a thing that rippled with bioluminescence moving in the dark, a mass of rough flesh and exposed bone that didn’t look like any animal he had ever seen.

  The thing had one large eye, and that eye was glaring at them.

  Elise grabbed his hand and pulled him with her as she stepped into the darkness where Ramses once had been. She threw the beam of her flashlight and they saw that there was only one way to move and that was forward through a small round door rimmed with plush red fabric and gleaming brass. They went, heads bent low to avoid hitting the stone ceiling, and as they walked small floor pockets emitted a warm light to help guide their way. Behind them the glass case of Ramses swung back into position and ascended to its original position. The ceiling above them creaked with the weight of whatever had entered the mummy room.

  Would it give up the chase? Would it be strong enough to move the case and come after them? Elise doubted that the thing, whatever it was, could fit into this space.
They were probably safe for now.

  “That looks like a car,” Taariq’s voice shattered the stillness of the dark passage.

  It was a vehicle shaped like a bullet with a glass bubble top and side fins that made it look like a child’s notion of a rocket ship. Four seats. The nose of the thing faced a round tunnel of darkness.

  The bubble top lifted with a hiss as they approached. Taariq stopped in his tracks. Ghosts? Elise went forward. She remembered proximity sensors from her childhood, the doors that would open at grocery stores as she approached.

  The seats were plush and upholstered with plush burgundy cloth. They looked comfortable.

  She dropped into the forward driver’s side seat. Her long legs stretched out. Dim lights activated in the padded interior side panels. There was no steering wheel, no dashboard, no instruments. Just a single button the size of her fist near the floor.

  Elise motioned for Taariq to join her. He hesitated for a moment. The ceiling groaned under the weight of the thing with one eye that seemed to still search for them above.

  Taariq took the passenger seat.

  “What is this?”

  “Let’s find out,” said Elise. She hit the button. The glass dome of the car came down with another hiss and hidden latches locked into place. They had time to look at each other for a split second before the vehicle shot forward into the black tunnel like a bullet and their heads were pinned back to the soft pillowed chair by the sudden acceleration.

  The vehicle came to a stop almost immediately, and the force slammed them forward.

  The glass bubble top hissed open, and they stepped out into a small chamber of stone. Hidden sensors again detected their presence. Warm amber light switched on and revealed a floor of old wood and walls of rough rock. Elise looked closely. Coquina. Ancient shells transformed into rock by time.

  That’s weird, she thought. You only get coquina where there had once been a sea or a river. We’re under the Egyptian Museum. In the desert. Was there once a river here?