So sleeping with my mother and then completely ignoring your paternity after she and her husband were murdered was what you considered the right thing? And not telling me anything about my half-brother, Jay? And knowing that I would be a payment for your debt in the years to come? And that I would be sick, too, from being your heir? Handy bunch of excuses, Dad. “So you slept with her and then six years later the Usthatan called in their marker, didn’t they?”
He sighed. “Yes. For some naïve reason, I had hoped they’d just forget about it and go away. I hadn’t heard a thing from them until years after you and Jibade were born. One day they showed up at one of my excavations and started asking for payment. They scared my workers so badly that every day the workers scattered healing herbs all over the tombs to ward off evil spells for the rest of the dig. I tried to put the Usthatan off as long as I could. Finally, I couldn’t keep them at bay any longer. They told me if I didn’t make things easy for them, they’d take things into their own hands, and that’s when they contacted your mother.
“Margaret was terrified Benjamin would find out about her affair, so I decided to get involved and give them what they wanted so that we could put this all behind us and move on. That’s why when Jibade was five and you were six, I had all of you come to Egypt under the ruse of your visiting a site. I figured, let’s let them do this one little thing, get it done and we can all finally move on.”
“But, Dad, they hurt us!” Jay exclaimed.
Armand’s pain showed in his face. “I had no idea how they planned to go about this. What do you want me to say? How many times can I say I’m sorry?”
A lot more.
“So you still haven’t told me why you avoided me my entire life,” Jay said. “It can’t be just because you made me ill.”
“That has a lot to do with it, and I’ll get to that. Jay, for starters, your mother never knew much about me. She was so lovely and simple and such a gentle soul. She put up with everything about me. My time away on digs, the gaggle of women that hung around me. She trusted me completely.”
“Which was stupid of her,” Jay seethed.
Nigel rolled his eyes. “All right already, Lad. So we all agree he's been a prat. Let’s move on.”
“Merci, Nigel,” Armand said, sarcastically. “As I was saying, your mother Simone was naïve, and I was a rake. I admit it. But, when she gave birth to you, I fell instantly in love, just the way a father should. I wanted to be with you every moment I could. The only problem was, I made you very sick. And not just a little, but a lot. I quickly realized you got asthma whenever I took off my opal so I bought you your own beautiful little anklet and necklace and bade Simone to make you wear one of these talismans at all times. She always did everything I asked, so of course she agreed. But, you still had a reaction to me. Even now, you’re not having an attack, but I’ll bet you still have a heaviness in your chest, don’t you? And we’re both wearing our gems.”
Jay pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
Armand glanced at Kelsey. “Are you ill as well?”
She glowered at him. “No, I’m fine. I feel nothing.” Which was true. Maybe I’m not pregnant.
Jay grunted. “Great, so the opals don’t work for me.”
Armand shook his head. “Actually, they work brilliantly, but for some reason when you and I are together the connection is stronger than most. I started to avoid you, Jibade, because I didn’t want to contribute to your condition. Every now and again you traveled with your mother and occasionally came in contact with others of our kind. This happened rarely, and most of the time you had your pendants on, so you were safe. But with me, you always felt a bit under the weather. I figured the less time I spent with you, the better off you’d be.”
“That was misguided, Dad. You hurt me more by staying away. You should have told me what was going on.”
“I see that now, but I was just trying to protect you. Remember that dig when you were thirteen? Even with your bracelet on and my earring, I took precautions and wore an additional opal pendant and anklet. Even that didn’t help. I finally had to send you away.”
Kelsey squinted. “Yeah, what happened on that dig? I heard something about a particular coffin that intrigued you?”
“It didn’t just intrigue me, Kelsey. It changed me. I knew then and there that I needed to make amends for what I’d done, to Jibade, to you, and to the world. I finally saw the proof with my own eyes. Call it an epiphany.”
Nigel scoffed. “Epiphany, my arse. You just wanted to make sure your soul would not be obliterated like the rest of them. You’re still egotistically selfish that way, Armand.”
Armand whirled on him. “And what’s wrong with that? Now that you know the truth, you don’t wish this, too? You wish Ustha to claim your soul and destroy it so that you never move on to anything? You want her to obliterate your body as if you never existed on this earth? Do any of you even know what comes after this life? I don’t, but I want my soul to have the chance to move on to whatever might be out there if there really is something. You chastise me after I brought you the truth of what happens to us?”
“This isn’t just about you any longer,” Nigel said. “It is about all of us. No one knows really what comes after this life. But if we have faith, we must believe we move on… to somewhere.”
Kelsey remained silent. She knew what else lay out there. She knew what would happen to her when she died. Her physical body would end and her soul would be reborn. She chose to keep this to herself. Unless Ustha really had the ability to claim her soul before she moved on to the bardos. Was that even possible? Maybe it was. She was merely a human now. She’d chosen to have a soul, and a path, just like everyone else. But I can still travel to Xanadu. Kelsey stared around at the others, knowing none of them would be able to understand what she’d gone through, or who she really was, so she decided to say nothing. The less they knew about her, the better. I wonder if I could fight Ustha if she came after me? What would I do? How does one defeat a god? And what about her dreams of a deva protecting her? Was he there to help her defeat Ustha? Kelsey knew that dreams meant so much more than mere nighttime fancies. In her universe, they always meant something.
Armand shook her from her musings. “Ever since my secondary school days, I’ve had an obsession about all of the empty tombs dotting Egypt. What is the real reason they are all empty? So many times these are not cut and dry cases where it’s a robbery or a simple ruse. The fact is, I’ve spent years traveling to every single site I could find. What the public doesn’t know is that while in many of these empty tombs, I got a physical reaction from being there. I would take off my amulet and the tics would start.”
“You mean, like someone was in there with you? One of us?” Jay asked. “How is that even possible?”
“Exactly, Jay. How is that possible? I hid the reactions as best I could from my workers, but what about those tombs made me react? I can only assume it had something to do with Ustha. When you were thirteen, you had the same reaction to that tomb where you visited me. Jay, you stayed ill that entire week, which is why I finally sent you away with the nanny. I know it made you furious, but you have to understand, I didn’t know what I was dealing with at the time. The only way to help you get better was simply to keep you out of the tomb, and away from me. Once we did that, your symptoms ceased.”
“I sought out Nigel and Gianni, and we came up with a theory.” He took a deep breath. “We believe that all of the empty coffins had actually been filled with descendants of Kenmut at one time.”
Jay stared at him incredulously. “How did you come up with that theory?”
“Because each of them also had a physical reaction when they visited those sites.”
“Then, where do the bodies go?” Kelsey asked.
“I believe that when we die, when Ustha comes to us to take our souls, she also takes our bodies. They become one with our souls, instead of separating. Instead of both moving on to Osiris and our souls goi
ng back to Kenmut, she destroys them, but apparently their essence is left behind.”
Kelsey nodded towards Jay. “So she physically removes them from the tombs. Just like when we left the Decan and we suddenly arrived back in this apartment. The Decans can move our bodies.”
Jay shook his head. “But, Dad, that body in the temple was physically intact. It hadn’t disappeared, so why were you so obsessed with it? That’s completely at odds with what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not at odds at all. The body proved to me what I had been thinking all along. I believe now that Kenmut got to that one in time and saved his soul before Ustha could destroy it, though I doubt very much he’ll answer me if I ask him. I believe he beat Ustha to it before she or her minions could desecrate it. As a result, the deceased remained in the coffin, intact.”
Armand moved over to his computer desk. He opened the drawer and pulled out a photograph of a mummy. He handed it around.
As Kelsey stared at the dead Egyptian, she sighed. This was once a person. A living breathing human being and now it was nothing more than a defiled body, lying naked for all to see. At least its soul had possibly been saved.
“I am not proud of what I did, but I desecrated the tomb and unwrapped the body. I had to know. The mummy is turned on its side and you can see the darkening of the skin just above his left armpit. The tell-tale sign of trauma to the area. I believe this is where Ustha’s people implanted the individual.” He pointed to the mummy’s leg. “And these were etched on his leg.” The photo showed a tattoo of an Ankh and hieroglyphic tattoos equaling the number thirty-three.
Kelsey started. The number thirty three again. Hadn’t Ustha uttered that number right before she vanished this evening? Kenmut uttered it as well. Kelsey stared at the post-it notes Armand had taped around the painting of the Sa on his wall. What does this number mean?
“So all these dried herbs around your apartment and the Sa on the wall,” Kelsey said. “You think that’s going to protect you from a vengeful goddess? A burned sprig of rosemary and some rosewater?” She shook her head. Her father was such a fool to believe in superstitions.
Armand bit his lip. “I tried a lot more than just that, though I may have taken it too far.” He raised his sleeves, the cuffs of his pants, and his shirt revealing tattoo after tattoo of Egyptian symbols of protection. And then he showed them the back of his leg, the number thirty-three inked in bold, black letters. “It seemed to work for the mummy. Obviously, I’m not taking any chances.
Chapter 17
PANCAGGALA
It was late in the evening when they finally turned in for the night. Gianni and Nigel fell asleep in Armand’s bed. Armand crashed on the couch and Kelsey and Jay fell asleep on the living room floor, sharing an old blow-up mattress Armand had stored in his closet. Jay had finally stopped trying to make moves on Kelsey and kept his body discreetly away from her.
I guess finding out that I’m his half-sister squashed his libido.
Kelsey had fallen asleep quickly and soon started dreaming. Ever since her experience in Tibet, she dreamed every single night. No longer were the monks from the monastery astral projecting themselves into her fantasies, trying to guide her to learn all about her spiritual path. Now her imaginings had become her own, but they had changed yet again. This confused her. Confused her so much that two months after her ordeal in Tibet, she’d left Desmond for a week and traveled back to the monks. At the time, she hadn’t thought that would turn into a pattern with them. Her leaving him behind while she trekked across the world. The monks had assured her they would no longer intrude on her life without her knowledge and would allow her path to be lived unfettered by their interference. Still, she felt certain they still had things they could teach her. She remembered sitting with the Abbott in the temple as they drank tea.
“Kelsey,” the Abbott explained. “In Buddhist lore, dreams have great psychological significance. Common scientific theory suggests that dreams are simply the subconscious working though challenges which occur during a person’s waking hours. That our lives' daily actions dictate these dreams by acting out the different stresses we experience during the day, working through our anxieties, and reliving situations. Our subconscious minds try to work things out and find solutions to our problems.”
“But my dreams weren’t always like that,” Kelsey said.
“No, growing up they weren’t. We influenced many of your dreams telepathically. Back then, we astral projected ourselves into your nighttime fantasies and manipulated them in the hopes that we could teach you.”
She knew that. It was how she learned about Xanadu and the powers she had there.
The Abbott continued. “But, we also believe that dreams represent the kammic energies accumulated from our past lifetimes. The mind has the ability to trigger a past event from a previous lifetime and bring it to the surface in the present one.”
“Like what happened to me when I dreamed about all those dead girls.” She referred to her nightmares over the years in which each one ended with the torturous death of one child or another. These girls were actually representations of her, murdered by the minions of Mara, the Buddhist devil, in all her past lifetimes.
“That is exactly what I mean. Those experiences were so tragic that their kammic energy stayed with you in every lifetime and lived deep within your core. As your mind and ka tried to work though this, they came out in your dreams. But dreams don’t end there. There are other types of dreams that are even more powerful. They’re called prophetic dreams, and while rare, they can occur.
“This is what we believe is happening to you now. From your descriptions, we believe you have a Trāyastriṃśa deva from the mountains of Sumeru coming to you. For what reason, we don’t know, but they have been known to intervene into humans' dreams in order to protect them from harm.”
Kelsey had stared at him over the rim of her teacup. “Wait, so you think devas are now influencing my dreams because I need protection? So now I have my own guardian angel on top of all this? Who is coming to harm me? Is it Mara again?”
The Abbott shook his head. “I don’t believe so, but I can’t be sure. Your spiritual father lost his battle with you once, but you should not be so naïve to think that he won’t try to exact some retribution again in this lifetime. Be ever aware Kelsey.”
“I won’t be surprised by him any longer, Abbott. I can feel and recognize him now, and know when he is near. What’s happening to me these past few months is something entirely different. And all people dream, Abbott. Maybe it’s just a dream.”
The Abbott regarded her. “Your existence is not as simple as other humans, Kelsey. Your path has affected an enormous number of people and most likely attracted the attentions of gods at all levels. It stands to reason one of them has decided to protect you from something. And if they are inhabiting your dreams, I guarantee you there is a reason. You must be on your guard.”
“A good reason, or a bad reason, Venerable One?”
The Abbott put down his teacup. “That, I can’t answer. I am not enlightened enough to know.”
“Then how do I find out why he’s here?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you should ask him.”
And that very night in Armand’s apartment, she did.
#
When Kelsey had first returned from Tibet, her dreams changed. No longer did they plague her with the recollections of her spiritual father’s attacks on her soul. No longer did she dream about the hideous and torturous death of one female child after another. Now her dreams centered on Xanadu and a visiting deva. And not just any deva, but specifically one who reminded her of one of the deity statues she had seen in the corner of a hidden garden in Xanadu. The being was human-like, but she knew, even in her dream state, that he was not of this world. At times his body filled the sky, and other times he seemed to manifest himself as a smaller human entity to be near her, though he differed distinctly from any other human who existed on earth.
This being radiated with an inner light, as if the sun filled his beautiful olive skin from within. And tonight, in Egypt, she sought him out by taking herself to Xanadu. She arrived outside of her garden home with the strange little creatures that inhabited the burrows surrounding her hut. The deva waited there, just outside of her periphery, residing within the trees. She turned, and for the first time, addressed him.
“Who are you?”
The being moved forwards into the glen and bowed. “I wondered when you would finally accept my presence. I am Pancaggalalenavasi-Tissa. Though you may call me Pancaggala.”
Kelsey played with a creature at her feet, rubbing its furry head between its ears as it purred in contentment. “You’re a Trāyastriṃśa deva, aren’t you? I believe I’ve seen your statue before in a garden in the woods.”
“I am a Trāyastriṃśa God,” he corrected. “And, yes, you have seen me. The beings in Xanadu have erected a statue there in my honor. While a passable depiction of me, they did not quite capture my true magnificence, as you can see.” He spread his hands wide and his body rippled with energy.
Great, so he’s pompous, too. Of course, most of these devas are, aren’t they? “Why are you here? Are you protecting Xanadu?”
At this, Pancaggala pursed his lips, as if in distaste. “No, I don’t protect this world. That is not what my great path is for. I am a god from the land of Sumeru. The second of the heavens of the Kāmadhātu and the tallest mountain of the world. This is the realm where my fellow gods exist.”
His body rippled and grew in size until he filled the space before her in the little garden. “Then why are you here with me? Why are you spending your valuable time inhabiting the dreams of a mere mortal? Are you protecting me from something?”
His response was not what she had anticipated. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Mayadevi bade me to watch over you.”
The Quest of the Empty Tomb Page 14