The List of Seven

by Mark Frost

  A low whistle came from Larry on the other side of the bend. “Have a muggins at this, then.”

  Sparks and Doyle traced the light of Larry’s candle and joined him, climbing up onto a barrier of crates that seemed to be a shield for the sight that greeted them. Sparks held high the torch, and they looked down at a solid square block of identical mummies’ coffins, at least twenty in number, set shoulder to shoulder like cots in a crowded flophouse. The lids had been removed and stashed in a heap to one side. Two of the boxes still held their occupants: rangy, blackened, and withered corpses sheathed in rotting bandages. The rest were empty.

  “Good Christ,” said Doyle, as they moved forward to examine the lids.

  “Weapons, defensive actions,” said Sparks, studying the pictographs. “These were warriors’ graves. Coffins of similar size and design, identical hieroglyphs: These bodies were the royal household guard, entombed en masse. When Pharaoh died, it was custom to kill and bury his garrison alongside, an escort to the Land of the Ancients.”

  “There’s service above and beyond the call,” said Larry.

  They looked at each other.

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” said Sparks with a strange grin.

  “What should we do?” asked Doyle.

  Before he could answer, the room was electrified with the expressive screech of rusty iron hinges from far across the chamber.

  “For the moment,” said Sparks, instantly on the alert, “I strongly suggest that we run.”

  Run they did, as far and as fast from the iron doors as their legs and limited light would carry them. The storeroom’s fabulous inventory was reduced to an ill-defined blur. Moving along the wall, they searched for an exit and finally found one in the farthest corner—double oaken doors, exceptionally stout. Larry lit his candle and examined the locks.

  “Dead bolts,” said Larry, sizing up his opposition. “No access to ’em.”

  Throwing their collective weight against the doors did not cause so much as a quiver in the wood.

  “Chains on the other side for good measure,” said Larry. “Guess they don’t want tourists wandering in unannounced.”

  “Blasted museum,” said Doyle.

  “Shall I have a skivvy for another way?” asked Larry.

  “No time,” said Sparks, casting a sharp eye around. “Larry, we need loose metal, rocks, steel, scrap iron, whatever you can find, a whole mass of it—”

  “On it,” said Larry, as he moved off.

  “We passed some cannon a while ago, Doyle, can you remember where that was?”

  “I remember seeing them. Back a ways, I think.”

  “Then look for them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.”

  Heading back into the open room, they tried as best they could to retrace their steps through the motley collection. The passage looked frustratingly unfamiliar. Another cry of rusty hinges found its way across the vasty chamber, but as yet there was no other sign of their attackers.

  “Jack, provided we find one, what do you propose to do with a cannon?”

  “That depends on which of our needs arises with more urgency.”

  “Our needs?”

  “Much as I hate the defacing of government property, we shall have to blast our way out through those doors or turn and defend ourselves. Whichever comes first.”

  Doyle kept his opinion about his preferred alternative to himself. Each new protest from the hinges pounded a spike of fear deeper into his mind.

  Their search seemed to last an eternity but took no more than five minutes, by which time the hinges had ceased their soundings. Save for the echoes of the two men’s footsteps, the room grew ominously silent. They did find cannon, masses of cannon, cannonades of cannon. The difficulty now was in choosing one to suit their purpose: Sparks quickly settled on a Turkish sixteen-pounder attached to a caisson. They lifted either side of the hitch and muled it behind them, negotiating through the storeroom as rapidly as their haphazard path and the gun’s ungainly weight would allow.

  “How do we know it works?” asked Doyle as they ran.

  “We don’t.”

  Doyle would have given the shirt off his back for enough grease to silence the caisson’s squeaky wheels, for behind them in the direction of the iron doors they heard boxes and crates toppling over, crashing; their pursuers were in the room, ignoring the aisles and taking the shortest route to their quarry. Sparks stopped and looked around.

  “Is this the way we came?” he said.

  “I was following you. I thought you knew.”

  “Right. Grab a couple of those sabers while they’re handy, will you, Doyle?” said Sparks, pointing to an overflowing cache of weapons nearby.

  “Do you really think we’ll need them?”

  “I don’t know. Would you rather find yourself at a point where you regret not having them?”

  Doyle took two of the long, curved blades, and they resumed hauling the cannon. Please God, let him know which way we’re going, prayed Doyle, and not into the arms or claws of whatever it is that’s behind us—if they are behind and not in front of us—please God, let them be far behind us and more hopelessly lost in this labyrinth than we are. There, that statue of Hercules slaying a lion—one of the Twelve Labors, he had to muck out a stables as well: What a time to think about that!—at any rate we definitely passed Hercules on our way to the cannons—

  “We’re going the right way!” announced Doyle.

  Larry was waiting for them near the double doors beside a heap of collected debris: bricks, broken lances, fragments of metal.

  “’Fraid I had to vandalize a touch, pulling odd bits off this and that,” Larry said, with a slightly stricken conscience.

  “You’re absolved,” said Sparks. “Give us a hand.”

  They maneuvered the cannon into position: point-blank at the oaken doors ten feet away.

  “Doyle, find something to anchor the base,” said Sparks, “or the recoil will neutralize the thrust. Larry, front-load the muzzle, pack it in tight, heaviest and sharpest items last, we’ll only have one shot at this.”

  They fell to following orders. Sparks took one of the vials from his chemistry bench out of his vest, set it gently on the ground, pulled the shirt from his pants, and began tearing a strip off the hem. Doyle returned to the clearing moments later, dragging a rusty chain and anchor.

  “Will this do?” he asked.

  “Splendid, old boy.”

  They wrapped its chain securely around the cannon as Larry tamped the payload into the barrel with a Venetian barge pole.

  “Ready here,” said Larry.

  “How do we set it off?” asked Doyle.

  “Thought I’d use this nitroglycerin,” said Sparks, as he uncorked the vial and lowered it gingerly into the cannon’s breach.

  “You’ve been carrying nitroglycerin around in your pocket this entire time?” asked Doyle, retroactively alarmed.

  “Perfectly harmless; detonation requires ignition or a direct blow—”

  “My God, Jack! What if you’d fallen in the tunnel?”

  “Our worries would have been over by now, wouldn’t they?” said Sparks, stuffing the strip of linen into the fuse hole.

  Boxes crashed only a hundred yards behind them.

  “Here they come,” said Larry, unsheathing his knives.

  “Stand back,” said Sparks.

  Larry and Doyle took cover to the rear. Sparks set the torch to the fuse and joined them. They sank down behind some crates, closed their eyes, covered their ears, and waited for the explosion as the fabric burned down into the hole. Nothing.

  “Will it go?” asked Doyle.

  “Hasn’t yet, has it?” said Sparks.

  More boxes fell, moving relentlessly closer.

  “Better hurry, then,” said Larry.

  Sparks moved carefully forward to inspect the cannon. Doyle took a firmer grip on the scimitar, looking down at it for the first time: he felt as if he were caught in a dre
am holding a prop from the Pirates of Penzance. Sparks peered down into the fuse hold, then quickly sprinted back toward their hiding place.

  “Still burning—” He dove for safety.

  The cannon exploded magnificently in a hail of sparks and a great burst of white smoke. The men rose immediately and ran forward; the caisson had crumbled, and the little cannon pitched cockeyed to the floor, half-cracked, but it had bravely held the charge and effectively delivered its freight. The double doors hung off their hinges, splintered to matchsticks and not a moment too soon; they could hear that blighted, festering gurgle as the creatures on their tail closed in.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Sparks.

  They ran to the doors, kicked the vestigial wreckage out of their way, and climbed over the chains that had secured its other side, where a flight of stairs led up and away to freedom.

  “Go on ahead,” said Sparks, stopping on a landing at the foot of the stairs to tear another strip from his shirt.

  “Whatever are you doing, Jack?”

  “I don’t particularly fancy this bunch chasing us down the streets of Bloomsbury, do you?”

  Shadowy black shapes moved toward them through the dispersing clouds of smoke.

  “Go on, I’ll catch up to you,” said Sparks, uncorking a second vial of explosive and pouring it out onto the floor.

  “He says go, we should go, guv,” said Larry, tugging on Doyle’s sleeve.

  The first shapes were nearly at the doors.

  “My revolver, please, Jack,” said Doyle, standing his ground.

  Sparks looked at Doyle as if he’d gone insane, then pulled the gun from his belt and tossed it to him. Doyle calmly aimed and emptied all six chambers at the advancing figures, eliciting some memorably inhuman howls and knocking the leaders of the pack a few feet back from the opening, allowing Sparks just enough time to finish pouring the nitro and lay out the long shirt strip from the puddle back toward the stairs.

  “Run!” shouted Sparks.

  Larry yanked Doyle up the steps as Sparks lit the fabric with the torch and sprinted after them. As they made the turn at the landing. Doyle looked back and caught a glimpse of the lead creature as it lurched into view at the foot of the stairs: tall and impossibly wasted, gaunt, spidery limbs waving spasmodically, hair and teeth in a decayed face held together by rotted linen, pinprick red eyes lit with venomous intensity. That’s what Doyle thought he saw in the split second before the entire basement disappeared with a disequilibrating boom: The explosion obliterated sight and sound. Walls crumbled, smoke shot everywhere, obscuring everything. The stairs beneath their feet undulated like piano keys.

  Pushed by the momentum of the blast, the three men threw themselves through the nearest door. Their torch extinguished by the rush of air, they lay in darkness on the cool marble floor, stunned, ears ringing, trying to recapture their wind; it was as if they’d been struck massive blows to the head and solar plexus. Time passed. They stirred, tentatively at first, a low moan escaping from each, but with the tintinnabulary ringing in their ears, they were unable to hear themselves.

  “All in one piece?” asked Sparks finally.

  He had to ask twice more before the question registered. They blinked repeatedly and looked at each other like amnesiacs, testing their extremities, amazed to find them still in working order. Although nothing felt broken, Doyle couldn’t find a part of his body that didn’t feel pummeled. The monster came rushing back into the eye of his mind as if he were adjusting a refocusable lens. He realized he still gripped the purloined sword: His fingers felt as if they’d grown into the handle; he had to use his free hand to pry them off. The men slowly helped each other to their feet, and it was just as well they couldn’t clearly hear the painful groans the effort cost them.

  Doyle looked back warily at the double doors. “Think that’s done for them, then?”

  “Bloody well better,” said Larry, trying to coax a kink out of his back. “I couldn’t fend off an evil baby armed with a rattle ’bout now.”

  “That was the last of the nitro, anyway,” said Sparks.

  “Is that what you were doing at your flat, Jack, cooking nitroglycerin?”

  Sparks nodded.

  “I’m glad I’m not your neighbor.”

  “That last lot was a bit too vigorous on the volatile side, I’m afraid.”

  “If it put paid to those bleedin’ rag-heads, you’ll hear no complaint from me,” said Larry.

  They felt around in the darkness until they found their torch. With some small trouble facilitating the use of his fingers, Larry dug out a match and struck it on the floor. The torch flared and revealed their location; an empty marble antechamber, more reminiscent of the museum’s public rooms than the strange place from which they’d come. Behind them hazy motes of smoke issued from under the still-swinging doors.

  “Let’s find a proper exit,” said Sparks.

  They turned and were about to take their tottering leave when the doors behind them swung open. They wheeled stiffly, steeling themselves for combat. But what crawled through the door to confront them was not an angry host of the undead, or even a single intact opponent; dragging the crushed head and half a torso of one of the creatures doggedly forward was a single, clutching, mutilated arm. A line of ashen sludge trailed behind the seeping wreckage. The face worked its loose and shattered jaw, as if trying to summon some thousand-year-old curse. The thing in its surviving form was more loathsome than formidable, but the eyes were still powered by the same malevolent fire.

  “Jesus,” said Doyle, backing away.

  “Persistent bastards, ain’t they?” said Larry.

  Sparks took Doyle’s saber, strode forward, and with one decisive stroke beheaded the ruined monstrosity. The creature froze; the light faded from its eyes, arm and torso collapsed as the head rolled harmlessly away. Larry ran forward and booted the head through the open door like a football.

  “He scores!” shouted Larry. “Wickam over Leicester, one to zed in extra time! Wickam takes the Cup!”

  Doyle knelt down to inspect the wreckage; what little had been left behind was already sifting into a quintessence of dust. Nothing about the decrepit leavings suggested any life force had animated those dry and dusty cells in the millennia since their original tenant had slipped its mortal coil.

  “What do you see, Doyle?” asked Sparks, kneeling beside him.

  “The remains are completely inert. Whatever energy or spirit that directed this thing is gone.”

  “What sort of energy?”

  Doyle shook his head. “I’m sure I don’t know. Something alive but not living. Puts me in mind of the gray hoods.”

  “Energy isolated from spirit. A form of will without mind.”

  “Black magic then, is it?” asked an oddly chipper Larry.

  “Words we could put to it, I suppose,” said Doyle. “For categorization, if not understanding.”

  “No disrespect, guv, but wot you want to understand an unholy creepin’ terror like that lot for? Be glad we got the better of it and move on, that’s how I look at it.”

  “We should move on in any case,” said Sparks, rising. “The explosion should have awakened the soundest sleeping guard in the empire.”

  With Sparks leading the way, they left the antechamber by way of a corridor that held the greatest promise of an exit.

  “Wouldn’t want to be the watchman happens across this mess on my go-rounds,” said Larry. “Put me right off my kip.”

  “I could do for that scotch about now, Larry,” said Doyle.

  “Pleasure, sir. Get ourselves home first. Never had to break out of a museum before,” said Larry, begging the question of how many times he’d been required to break into one.

  “I’m quite sure you’re up to the task,” said Doyle.

  chapter fourteen

  LITTLE BOY BLUE

  LARRY WAS INDEED UP TO THE TASK. ONE JUDICIOUSLY BROken window later, they were back on the street and quickly
across it to the safety of Sparks’s apartment, where they administered themselves a full measure of vintage single-malt from a beaker on Sparks’s bench and settled in for what little remained of the night. Doyle assessed their injuries and pronounced them relatively intact, if not a great deal the worse for wear, and fit to travel, which Sparks stated as their task for the following day. Without even the energy left to inquire as to where tomorrow might carry them, Doyle fell swiftly into a thick and leaden sleep.

  The next evening’s newspapers would be dominated by ripsnorting accounts of an audacious criminal attempt to graverob the British Museum’s priceless Egyptian reserves. In their eagerness to gain access to the treasures, the looters had apparently blown themselves up along with their targeted plunder, a rare collection of Third Empire mummies. Just why the mummies themselves had been lifted by the thieves—and likewise destroyed in the explosion, one of the bodies having been quite incredibly hurtled up a flight of stairs and through a door by the blast—and not their priceless gold-leafed coffins, was the sort of minor journalistic inconsistency to a sensational headline-grabber that didn’t seem to tax the tabloids’ credulity in the slightest. Along with breathlessly overstated descriptions of the carnage inflicted on museum property, there were the predictable cries of outrage from members of Parliament and other oft-quoted pillars of culture, deploring the desecration of such a conspicuously public institution, with blame obliquely laid at the feet of a far-too-liberal immigration policy, followed by the usual stem nostrums for correcting the social faults that were so clearly at the root of such hooliganism: no respect for God, country, and Queen, et cetera, et cetera. The facts suffered their habitual neglect. No word of the connecting Roman viaduct or a statue of Tuamutef in evidence, nor a whisper regarding a vertical tunnel leading directly to the office of the president of the publishing firm of Rathborne and Sons, Limited.

  But long before those papers even hit the streets, while the streets were still awash with police inspectors and hand-wringing Egyptologists and a host of rubbernecking civilians, before Doyle had roused himself from his deathlike slumber, John Sparks had been out the door since dawn and returned from his morning’s work to rouse the others and set them on their way. Bidding the noble Zeus farewell, the three men slipped down the back staircase before noon, climbed aboard their hansom, and slipped through a gaping hole in the investigative net that had been so hastily thrown over the blocks circumferencing the British Museum.