A dozen corpses, some mutilated in an obviously cannibalistic manner, lay bunched together, almost mummified in the peculiar atmospheric conditions that existed this far beneath the earth. A few more corpses lay scattered farther away, but these fifteen or so bodies were all that had remained of the Meir family when finally, after generations of in-breeding had produced human strains unable to survive in the world and when even the ability to reproduce had at last been bred out of the poor creatures, they had succumbed to the relentless law of nature.
With care, Zarnak played the beam of his flashlight over the desiccated faces and in some he could yet see, in the dried and sunken sockets, the Meir “taint.” Satisfied, Zarnak returned to the surface world.
4. Two Surprises and a Conclusion
Zarnak rose early the next morning both because he was habitually an early riser and because the rambunctious Luke, trailed by his mother, were preparing for a school day. For his morning ablutions, Zarnak was compelled to use the house’ sole bathroom on the second floor. When he was finished, he passed the open door to the boy’s room and decided to take a cursory look about the scene of the attempted murder. It proved to be no different than any other boy’s room except for one thing.
Zarnak picked up the book that rested on the night table by the boy’s bed. By its thin wooden covers and rumpled pages held together by bits of twine, he could tell immediately that it was of homemade manufacture. Curious, he flipped it open and saw that each page contained Georg Meir’s neat handwriting and what was more, his experienced eye recognized the words as an English translation of segments of the dread Necronomicon, a very rare tome of a sorcerous and blasphemous nature. It was plain that Meir had somehow made a selective translation of the original, but what was it doing in the child’s room?
Just then, Mrs. Geddes stepped into the room and before she had time to say anything, Zarnak asked, “Sondra, what is this book doing here?”
She recognized it immediately. “Oh, Henry found it in the library and thought it’s Arabian Nights’ stories would make good bedtime reading for Luke.”
To say that Zarnak was taken aback at this facile explanation would be an understatement. But then, as he reflected further, what else would an untrained eye see in the evil parables of Abdul Alhazred’s book but simply more tales of the Arabian Nights? Then, idly thumbing through the book’s pages, it fell open to a bookmark that rested on the last page of an entry that Zarnak recognized as an elaborate Spell of Reversal that was intended by the author as a method of counteracting spells, curses, and even mistaken summonings of antediluvian gods.
He took the book to the breakfast table with him and had it beside him when Luke and his mother joined him.
“Luke, this is Doctor Zarnak,” said Mrs. Geddes introducing the boy. “He’ll be staying with us for a few days.”
“How do you do, Luke?”
“Fine sir,” said the boy approaching Zarnak with his hand extended.
Zarnak smiled at this mature display and in taking the boy’s hand, looked into his eyes and was taken by surprise for the second time that morning. What a fool he had been! The answer to the whole problem had literally stared him in the face from the beginning!
“Sondra, the boy’s eyes…”
Mrs. Geddes showed a bit of irritation when she replied, a mother’s natural defensiveness toward her progeny.
“What about them?”
“They’re both the same color!”
“Well, yes.”
“But members of the Meir family have always sported dissimilar eyes; one blue and one brown.”
“That’s true, but I just assumed Luke’s eyes adjusted somehow, that the two colors turned out to be just a childhood thing that he grew out of…like his blond baby hair darkening…”
“But your husband’s eyes have normalized as well!”
“What? They…they have?”
“When did you first notice this change in your son?”
“Why, come to think of it, it was soon after we moved into this house.”
“Sondra, have Luke finish his breakfast, he won’t be going to school today,” Zarnak said.
A few hours later, Zarnak, Mrs. Geddes and Luke met with Scopes in his office. Scopes was having trouble with their explanations.
“I’m still not quite sure I understand you, Anton,” said Scopes.
“You say Geddes’ delusion has something to do with his eyes? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Evan, just let me ask you a single question: Has Geddes looked at himself in the mirror since he’s been here?”
“Why no; too dangerous. It’s against Resthaven’s rules to allow a patient anything with which he might harm himself or others. A mirror could be broken into sharp pieces…”
“Then I suggest we overlook the rules in this instance, supply Geddes with a mirror and further explanation may be moot,” said Zarnak.
Scopes shook his head in puzzlement but the imploring look on Mrs. Geddes’ face overcame whatever objections he might still have had. A few minutes later, the orderly had unlocked the door to Geddes’ room and, with his wife and son out of sight up the corridor, Scopes and Zarnak entered.
“Dr. Zarnak,” said Geddes rising from his cot. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”
“I never expected to be able to help you so quickly,” replied Zarnak modestly. “Mr. Geddes, do me the small favor of looking into this mirror?”
“A mirror? Why, are you trying to mock me by drawing attention to my affliction?”
“Not at all.”
Geddes took the hand mirror from Zarnak and hesitantly brought it up to his face. There was a moment of silence, then a sharp intake of breath. Suddenly, Geddes dropped the mirror with a crash, buried his face in his hands and broke out in heavy, wracking sobs.
Zarnak signaled to the orderly at the door and in moments Geddes’ wife and son were in the room. Mrs. Geddes took her husband’s hands in hers and drew them from his face. “It’s all right, dear,” she soothed. “Everything will be all right.”
Then, she deliberately placed Luke in front of him. Geddes’ gaze immediately went to the boy’s eyes and when he saw the change there, grabbed the boy in a great hug and crushed him to his body saying, “Oh God, forgive me!”
“I’m still not sure I understand all you’ve told me, Anton,” Scopes was saying some time later in his office. “You say it all came down to the color of his eyes?”
Zarnak nodded. “You’ll recall that I said I did not think Geddes was insane, that his delusion was the result of facts he had gathered from reading his ancestor’s private papers. Well, the most telling of these facts involved the color of the eyes sported by members of the Meir family, one blue and one brown. Geddes took this reality, a reality he himself had lived with his whole life, as the corroborating, the final proof of the horrific Meir legacy. Logically, it did not make sense, since the fate of the Meir’s was the result of radical, extended inbreeding, not a curse. In point of fact, there was nothing wrong, nor could there ever be anything wrong with Geddes or his son beyond the inherited color of their eyes. In effect, Geddes over-reacted. It was only with the fortunate change in father and son’s eye color that provided the logical point upon which Geddes’s mind could take hold and convince itself that the ‘curse’ had been lifted.”
“Are you sure it will be safe to allow Geddes to return home with his family?”
“Absolutely. With Sondra’s permission, I took all of Georg Meir’s papers and many of the older, unwholesome books in his library out into the yard and burned them all.”
Zarnak did not think it necessary to tell his friend of the real cause of the sudden change in the Geddes’ eye color; let him think it mere coincidence, a lucky chance. But the irony was not lost on Zarnak that the father who had tried to kill his son because of a perceived “taint,” had himself unknowingly cured the boy by reading him a “fairy tale.”
It was another fine autumn day when Zarnak exited
Resthaven so he put the top down on the BMW and took a leisurely route back to the city. On the seat beside him lay Georg Meir’s handwritten translation of the Necronomicon, kept by Zarnak as a reminder that he was, after all, only human.
st?”
The Legacy of Acheron
old!”
Mervyn Stalls smiled and stood.
Altogether, it had been a most satisfactory day, most satisfactory!
Pushing his way past the score or so of men crowding the cellar space, Stalls headed to the table at the front of the room. Finally shouldering a few losing bidders aside, he produced a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Man, it’s hot in here, he thought, eagerly anticipating his return to the air conditioned atmosphere of his hotel room.
“Congratulations, Mr. Stalls,” said a swarthy man whose head was covered in a burnoose that both protected him from the heat and helped to hide his features from too closely prying eyes. “I’m sure you’ll feel much pleasure in its possession.”
The man referred to the stone jar that he was just setting down on a wooden table laden with a number of similar objects.
“At the price I just bid, I better had,” said Stalls, replacing his handkerchief and pulling a roll of American bills from inside his shirt.
“You know as well as I, Mr. Stalls, that in this kind of market, it’s buyer beware,” said the man, leaning forward slightly in expectation of being paid. “But I assure you, the jar is genuine and what’s more, unopened.”
“Which is why you started the bidding so high,” Stalls said, peeling some bills from the roll. “If I hadn’t had a chance to have it appraised before, I wouldn’t give two hoots in hell for your assurances.”
The man chuckled, taking the proffered money. “And I don’t blame you. Cheats and forgers are as thick as cockroaches here in Cairo and they’re far more accomplished than those elsewhere. How anyone fell for that ossuary from Israel that was supposed to have held the bones of James, the “brother” of Jesus, a few years ago is beyond my capacity to understand.”
“If someone wants to find something bad enough, they’re willing to believe anything,” said Stalls, who knew of such fools first hand.
Having handed over the cash, he was free to take hold of the jar himself and look at it more closely.
The thing wasn’t large. Around a foot tall, it was narrow at the top and widened to a diameter of about eight inches before tapering again until it became the same size at the base as it was at the neck. The top was stoppered tight by a stone plug that showed to Stalls’ practiced eye, all the evidence of not having been tampered with…as promised.
“And you won’t tell me where it came from?” asked Stalls.
The man smiled and shrugged. “You know I cannot, Mr. Stalls. The site might still hold other objects of value. Objects my associates would like to find before their activities are discovered by the police.”
It was the price, besides the money he’d just handed over, that Stalls knew came with dealing on the black market. You could never be absolutely sure of the authenticity of what you were buying, but he’d dealt with Mehmed before and never been disappointed. The items he’d purchased had always checked out. It was one of the reasons why only the cream of the collector crop were invited to Mehmed’s auctions. Gazing at the Canopic jar he held in his hands, Stalls felt pretty damn sure that he was now in possession of an object that hadn’t been tampered with for at least 4,000 years, and that dated back to the Third Dynasty. Could the object inside still be preserved? Would there be enough of the kidney, intestines, or liver to take a viable DNA sample from? If so, he might be able to prove the existence of a highly developed Egyptian proto-culture from before recorded history, could prove the existence of the fabulous Hyborian Age from which Egypt arose on the ashes of a land called Stygia.
But he was getting ahead of himself…
Handing the jar back to Mehmed, he watched as the dealer wrapped it in cheap brown paper and string so that the completed package looked no different than the packages made up by local laundries and markets.
“Are you sure you’re not interested in anything else, Mr. Stalls?” asked Mehmed as he held out the package. “We’re holding another auction in a few days…some very nice items from the Iraqi National Museum. The police have already been bribed…”
“No thanks, I have what I want.”
Stalls, made his way to the rude wooden door at the back of the basement where a man standing lookout motioned to him that it was safe to leave. A moment later, the door had closed shut on its leather hinges and Stalls had emerged onto a dusty alley in the heart of the Cairo slums. Not too familiar with the streets in that part of the city, it took him some time to finally make his way from the crowded warren onto a paved thoroughfare where he could hail a passing taxi.
It was still short of a couple hours till dawn by the time he arrived at his hotel. He waited until the taxi had driven off before turning away from the main entrance and going around to the back and entering through the receiving area. There was no one on the street at that hour and he was sure he made it into the building without being observed. Outside his second floor room he fumbled with his keys before getting the door to his room open and, finally stepping inside, sighed in relief at the hum of the air conditioner.
Locking the door behind him, he carefully set the package down on a nearby bureau, imagining what was inside. By the Third Dynasty, the ancient Egyptians had refined their art of preserving the human body after death about as far as it could go. The secret lay in moisture, or rather the elimination of moisture from the body. To do that, the Egyptian priests would remove all of the body’s internal organs and place them into separate Canopic jars, like the one Stall had just won at auction. The process of removal was a pretty sophisticated one; they even developed an operation that could remove the brain from the head through the body’s nostrils, piece by piece with a pair of specially fashioned hooks! When they were done, all that would be left in the body was the heart, due to the Egyptian belief that it contained the soul and thought processes. The priest would next anoint the body in natron, a kind of salt that would absorb all remaining traces of moisture. After a sufficient amount of time had passed, the natron would be brushed off and the body wrapped in linen. The result was the marvelously preserved bodies found by archeologists in the nineteenth century, thousands of years since they’d first been mummified.
Looking at the package, Stalls could only wonder where it had come from. He was in no doubt about its authenticity, Mehmed was no fool; if word got around that he was dealing in forgeries and fakes, he’d be out of business in no time. All of the known tombs and pyramids were tapped out, there was nothing left to find in Cheops or the Valley of Kings. From time to time, isolated tombs were discovered beneath the shifting sands of the Sahara. Could his jar have come from one of those? He suspected that if any evidence for the existence of Stygia were to be found, it would most likely come from farther south, in what was known in ancient times as Upper Egypt. Could it have come f
Eagerly, he unwrapped the jar and set the paper aside. Holding the artifact closer to the lamp, he noted the faint markings that circled the jar. He recognized many, but one in particular stood out, the one that had caught his eye when he first examined the jar before the auction. The stylized figure of a serpent, the traditional emblem of Set, the snake god.
Setting down the jar, Stalls went to one of his suitcases, produced a key, and unlocked it. From inside he removed a vinyl case, unzipped it and withdrew a thick sheaf of Xeroxes bound in an unlabeled ring-binder. Sitting down on the edge of the bed and placing the binder on his lap, he flipped through its pages until he stopped at a title page labeled The Saracen Rituals. In order to be fully prepared for his Egyptian “shopping” trip, Stalls had brought as much of his research materials with him as possible. Most, of course, was stored on disk, and so accessible on his laptop, much of the rest was a simple
matter of surfing the ‘net. Some items, though, could be had in no other way than old fashioned hard copies. For that, he’d visited a few libraries in the United States and arranged to make copies of the pertinent information directly from the printed source. For The Saracen Rituals, he had to make a special stopover in London to visit the British Museum which had one of the only known copies on hand. Only a single chapter from Ludwig Prinn’s larger De Vermis Mysteriis, most Egyptologists dismissed the work as the ridiculous ramblings of an early version of a conspiracy theorist. Which it may well have been, but Stalls suspected that as paranoid as Prinn no doubt was, he did spend time in the Middle East in the 1500s and could very well have picked up some useful information; a suspicion the American confirmed when he first laid eyes on the jar. Flipping through the scanty pages of the Rituals, he finally found what he was looking for: a drawing of the Seal of Nephren-Ka, the infamous Black Pharaoh of Egyptian history. It matched perfectly with the image of a trampled snake on the jar in Stalls’ possession and confirmed in his mind that Nephren-Ka not only existed, but that he had been mummified at some point. What he had in the jar on the bureau before him, were none other than the human remains of the most notorious man in Egyptian history, a man that many researches still were not completely convinced even existed. But now he had the evidence! And if DNA testing proved it, his reputation in the field would be made. Of course, there would be questions about where the jar came from, but he already had a plan to explain that.
In any case, it was useless to speculate on the issue any further until he could have the jar examined in detail…and there were university laboratories he knew in the States that would do the job without asking any questions. Resigning himself to the wait, he snapped the binder shut and replaced it in his bag. Retrieving the paper and string, he rewrapped the jar and, yawning, shed his sweaty clothing and stepped into the shower.
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 15