There was light coming from the next gallery. Soft light, down close to the floor. Definitely not a working pair of emergency globes. He glanced up again. Still no green LEDs. Gene couldn’t peek in to see what lay around the corner. Jespers swallowed dryly. In twenty-two years working museum security, he’d never had to deal with anything more serious than drunken college students trying to get pictures standing under the Tyrannosaur skeleton, or school kids who’d gotten lost and wandered into STAFF ONLY areas while soccer moms or school teachers tried frantically to find them. He fingered the radio, then unsnapped the holster and drew out his Glock.
He held the flashlight out, away from his body, in case the intruder was armed and waiting for company. He sighted down the barrel, tracing the source of the light.
Candles. A ring of them, in the mummy room.
Jespers’ eyes were everywhere. He knew for certain now that there was an intruder in the museum. There hadn’t been any candles when he and Granger had done the walk-through two hours ago. There was something else, too. A smell that wasn’t just candle smoke. No, this was something familiar, but different. Cautiously, he approached the circle of light.
Incense. There were incense sticks burning, but they didn’t look store-bought. The odor wasn’t that of churches, either. This smell was spicier, more redolent. Jespers played the light around, but saw no movement and heard no sound.
He was about to take a closer look at the candles when he noticed something on the floor, centered in between them. An unrolled parchment, covered with hieroglyphics. It looked…ancient, as if it might turn to dust if he stared too hard at it. Slowly, he brought the light up, and found himself staring face to bandaged face with one of the exhibit’s mummies.
“Je-sus!” Jespers hissed, backing up a step.
He’d seen the mummies before, all of them. But he hadn’t really looked closely at them. He wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but the things creeped him out. And, starting tomorrow, people were going to pay good money to come stare at the damned things. Dead bodies from two thousand years ago, wrapped tight for shipment into the afterlife.
This one looked particularly nasty. Head tucked down at an angle, like he’d been buried trying to see if his foot were tucked in. And, oh, Christ…
The hands! The hands weren’t folded on its chest, like he was used to seeing. This one…this one’s hands were up, almost like a boxer’s, palms facing each other. But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the worst by far were the fingers.
They were bent. They looked almost like claws.
Jesper’s mind raced. Had this poor sonofabitch been buried alive? Like in the old Karloff movie? Bound up and sealed in one of these big coffins while he could still breathe enough to try and claw his way out?
The thought gave him the heebie jeebies. It made him sick to his stomach. He brought the beam back up to its face, and away from its tortured hands.
The sound came again.
Jespers whirled, stabbing the beam into dark corners, tracking back and forth until he was sure there was no one else in the room with him.
No one else alive, that was. The room held fourteen mummies, one of the largest single displays ever assembled for a traveling exhibit. Jespers didn’t see what the big deal was. They all looked pretty much the same to him, although now he had to admit, he hadn’t paid close enough attention. That reminded him, Mr. Claw-hands was at his back.
He turned back to face the mummy the intruder had shown so much interest in. He couldn’t make heads or tails of the parchment, but he’d seen that old black and white Karloff flick plenty of times as a kid, and thinking about what somebody might have been doing here made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Could somebody have been trying to…? Nah, that didn’t seem possible. All that mummy-raising stuff was bullshit, wasn’t it?
He shone the light on the mummy’s face. The head. Hadn’t its head been turned further right? Hadn’t it been looking down more?
No, he convinced himself. Impossible. The thing hadn’t moved. He was simply freaking himself out, because there was somebody in the museum who shouldn’t be, and he didn’t know where they were. The mummy had definitely not moved. It was exactly where it had been when—
The mummy’s head shifted. Its mouth opened beneath the wrappings and it breathed a ragged breath. The sound was as dry as dead leaves.
Jespers fumbled for the radio, but it dropped onto the floor, putting out a candle and shattering into a pile of useless plastic. He staggered back, flashlight still trained on the dead thing in the coffin, gun pointed right at its heart. It wobbled in its tomb for a second, head jerking from side to side. Then, somehow, it focused on Jespers, and slid its foot forward, stepping out of the case it had been trapped in for more than a millennium.
Jespers fired. Point blank. One, two, three bullets. The flashlight jerked. The thing’s hands, those hideous, constricted hands, began to open. Began to reach for him.
“Heeaaauuuuggghhh!” Jespers cried, turning to run from the risen thing that wanted him. He made to retreat, to go back in the direction from which he’d come.
Which was when the second one stepped into his path.
“Dear god, no!”
This one was smaller, in stained bandages that told an unspeakable truth. This one, too, had been mummified alive. Secured in the bandages still conscious, destined for an unimaginably cruel death.
He reeled back, firing wildly at it. Bullets didn’t seem to have any effect on them.
Why would they? a little voice in his head spoke up. You can’t kill what’s already dead.
He spun around again, running flat out for the doors at the opposite end of the hall. They were closed. They shouldn’t have been, but they were. He slammed into them, heart pounding, looking back over his shoulder.
They were coming for him. Though they moved slowly, they were still closing the gap too fast for Jespers’ comfort. He extracted his keys, fought to slot the right one, and plunged into the next room. What he saw turned his blood to ice.
Chloe Carpenter lay on the floor, awash in blood. Her shirt was torn open, and a ritual knife lay beside her in a pool of crimson. Judging from the slice that ran down her midsection, someone had been about to carve her to pieces.
Livers…intestines…lungs and stomachs, thought Jespers. Organs removed and placed in colorful pots…
Encircled in a second ring of candles was another scroll of parchment. Chloe stared up at the ceiling with dull, lifeless eyes. It looked like she’d been dead a while, her complexion waxy. No one was going to be playing grab-ass with her any more, he thought. But why hadn’t she screamed? He’d have heard a scream.
Jespers looked back. Claw-hands was entering the gallery, shuffling towards him, fingers still clenching and unclenching.
Too bad for Carpenter. There was nothing he could do for her now, though. He rushed past, skidding around a corner, shoes echoing like thunder in the empty display room.
Close. He was almost to the end of the pavilion. If he could make it out of here and into Horizons of Africa, he could use the security gate to seal the exhibit, trapping the living dead inside.
He just had to get there.
Behind him somewhere, one of his resurrected pursuers wailed. He could only imagine what it might be doing to Chloe Carpenter’s corpse.
Well, better her than me, he thought, Hoping it would keep them busy long enough for him to make his escape. Then he heard it again, and it stopped him in his tracks.
“No…it can’t be…”
They were in the room with him. Only seconds ago, he’d opened up a gap they couldn’t possibly close. But, here they were. Thirty feet away. Maybe less.
He unleashed a barrage of bullets, hoping to slow them down just a little. The final trigger-pull was a dry-fire, the slide locked open.
Empty.
He hurled the gun at Claw-hands. It was an accurate throw. But Claw-hands batted it away, and it slid harmlessly acr
oss the high-polished floor. It was remarkably agile for a dead thing. Karloff never moved that good.
Jespers ran towards the doors leading out of the pavilion, thankful to find them open. The Horizons of Africa exhibit was dark, too, but he didn’t care. That wasn’t a rotating attraction. It had been open for more than a decade. He knew it like the back of his hand.
He shot out of the Pharaohs pavilion, forgetting his plan to try and use the gates to trap the mummies. They had closed on him impossibly fast, why should he believe that steel gates would stop them? They were unnatural things, unearthly things. His only goal now was to get away from them. To outrun them and—
Barnum heard the high-pitched shriek and slowed, waiting for Chloe to catch up.
“You think?” she asked. He didn’t know. All he could do was shrug. Together, they stepped into Horizons of Africa, and followed the sound of the pain in the ass security guard’s wet, sucking breaths.
They found him about thirty feet ahead, impaled on the curved tusk of an enormous warthog. Its razor-sharp lower tusks were buried deep in Jespers’ belly. One of its record-breaking upper tusks held him suspended just off the floor. Jespers’ toes were barely able to keep him standing, as opposed to hanging. He tried to push himself off the spear of ivory, but the warthog had been taxidermied in a battle stance, its head angled upward. Jespers couldn’t push himself both up and back at the same time, and was choking on his own blood. He heard Chloe and Barnum approach, and turned to them wild-eyed, panic throwing him into convulsions. A minute later, he uttered a hideous cry of pain, followed by his death rattle.
“I didn’t know Corcoran had moved the warthog habitat,” Barnum said, fascinated by the sight of Jespers, pinned like a butterfly to nothing but empty air.
“I might have mentioned that with the new exhibit about to open, it was a good time to change Horizons up a little,” Chloe smirked, pulling the thick wrapping from around her face. Her lover chuckled.
“Helluva life cast,” he congratulated, referring to the replica of Chloe Jespers had seen upon entering the Treasures of Knowledge room, where writing instruments and papyrus scrolls were on display.
“You get the shell casings?” she asked, as they began unwinding their death shrouds. There was a lot of cleanup to be done.
Barnum nodded. “I gave Kyle some really good hashish,” the Egyptologist explained. “When he went outside to take a little taste, I loaded Jesper’s gun with the blanks.”
“You said you had an idea how to get rid of him,” Chloe said. “Now would be a good time to share,” she prompted. They were back in the mummy room. Paul leaned on one of the enormous, empty sarcophagi. He grinned wickedly at her.
“Wait,” she said, comprehending. “You’re not telling me you want to put him in…”
Paul was nodding. He held up his loosening wrappings.
“Think about it,” he said, patting the huge, open case. “It’s got his name written all over it. Sarcopha-Gus!”
Emmits strutted around, proud as a peacock as he and Kleik mingled with the museum’s biggest benefactors and celebrities. All told, about a hundred hand-picked invitees from the general public were in attendance as well, giving the media some ‘everyday folk’ to get comments from. The President found his two darlings, Carpenter and Barnum, standing by a display in the mummy room.
“Fantastic job, you two!” he exclaimed, shaking Barnum’s hand and giving Carpenter a hug that lasted just a little too long. “Love what you’ve done in here. It’s the most popular room in the whole exhibit. And this,” he commented, gesturing into the sarcophagus. “Great last minute addition. The kids love it!”
He was referring to a group of charter school students who’d been suggested by the mayor’s office. Part of his PR campaign to increase funding for education. Their mentor, an old antiquities scholar who didn’t look much younger than some of the exhibits, had been a gem himself, and the reporters had been sticking to him like white on rice.
“When did you guys find the time?” Emmits went on, pointing to the ‘fresh’ mummy the pair had surprised him with.
“Been working on it for a couple weeks,” Barnum said modestly. It was partly true. He and Carpenter knew that Jespers had been spying on them from the video room, and he was trying to leverage them for a payoff to keep quiet.
“Well, it’s the perfect final touch. Thing even reeks like its fresh!”
Carpenter shrugged modestly, offering the head honcho her most dazzling smile.
“We made it as realistic as possible,” she said. “Mummification is a messy process. The spices and resins used? They didn’t smell particularly pleasant even back then.”
Emmits spotted a broadcast journalist who was about to wrap up an interview. He excused himself to secure a little face time. Carpenter and Barnum clinked champagne glasses handed to them by a white-gloved waiter.
“And that,” said the old Egyptian to his students. “Is where the stories of bringing the dead back to life come from.” A reporter’s flash popped.
“Can you do it?” asked Lilah, a girl of about twelve, her male counterparts enthusiastically backing the idea. The old man laughed.
“Not with two thousand year old mummies,” he said, shaking his head and smiling warmly. “That’s only in the movies. There really isn’t a whole lot left under those bandages after all this time. Just skeletons, I’m afraid. They can’t just get up and start walking around without something holding those old bones together.”
“So, it’s all fake then? The whole thing about raising a mummy?” Carson chimed in, genuinely disappointed.
“Not…quite. That’s one of the things the old movies got right. Remember what you saw in class?” The kids nodded in unison. “Boris Karloff wanted to bring back his recently-deceased love. She wasn’t two thousand years old, she had just been taken away from him. He conducted a ritual that would snatch her back from the afterlife, even if it made the gods angry with him.”
“And that’s it? On that scroll there?”
“So it says,” confirmed the old man, looking at the parchment on display, surrounded by photographs from various excavations, including one of Lord Carnarvon—who many believed had fallen victim to the curse of Tutankhamun. There was even a movie poster from the 1932 film, which had established the mummy as one of Universal’s classic monsters.
“Can you read it for us?” Mr. Abdalla?” The request came from a TV reporter. The old man hadn’t noticed the camera rolling. He thought about declining, but the kids…their faces were lit up with excitement. Who cared if a hokey film from the last century was responsible? The kids were here, now, and they were interested. Fascinated by the history of his homeland. And, the mayor had asked…
“Sure, why not?” he agreed, the decision met with a chorus of cheers. The videographer gave him a thumbs up. Abdalla, who’d turn ninety in a week, put on his spectacles, turned to the brittle ritual parchment, and began to read. When he was finished, the crowd which had gathered around the Treasures of Knowledge sideshow burst into applause.
In the mummy room, beneath the tightly wrapped bandages, Gus Jespers opened his eyes.
And smiled.
READY TO GET TORN UP?
I’ve written a lot of things in my life. Short stories, obviously, comic books, a twice-produced teleplay, half a dozen screenplays (one produced, one optioned), and a whole lot of articles for various publications. I’ve written a ton of horror, a little bit of sci-fi, dabbled in fantasy, hell, I’ve even spent time in the trenches writing spank fiction for men’s mags.
But I read a lot of mysteries. I enjoy the genre. My Dad, who passed away recently, used to love ‘em, too. So, since I thought I had what it took to be on a bookshelf (e-book or otherwise) with faves like John Sandford and Michael Connelly, I wrote one.
Torn to Pieces is my first novel, and it won’t be the last. For you horror-hounds, I think this one’ll satisfy you. For mystery and thriller fans, no doubt. Love procedurals when not skulki
ng around in the shadows with the supernatural? Yep, you’re going to be happy, too. Here’s a sample of the book. I hope you enjoy it enough to take a shot on reading the whole thing. Next to one particular screenplay, it’s unquestionably the best thing I’ve ever written, and I’m not afraid to say I’m proud of it.
—Joseph M. Monks
PROLOGUE
It was eight-fifteen when Naomi exited the church, far later than she’d expected. Still, she couldn’t help but feel upbeat. Certainly better than she’d felt going in. Walking the aisles of the D’Agostino market, she selected a bottle and carried it to the counter, eager to get home and unwind in front of the big screen. The Bourne Identity, or Good Will Hunting?
Why choose? There was plenty of popcorn for a double-feature, she decided, her footfalls echoing in the stairwell leading to her apartment. Spending the night with the two men in her life—Matt Damon and Orville Redenbacher—after all, was never a disappointment.
She paused at her door, fingering the new addition to her key ring. Tracing the white number six embossed on the plastic chip. Thinking not about where she was, but where she’d been. Where she’d come from. Standing on the cheery gingham welcome mat, she clenched her fist tight enough to imprint a pale, reverse six in the center of her palm.
“Six months,” she whispered, pushing through the door, incredulous. She had made it six months.
She set the bottle on the counter and quickly flipped through the mail. Finding nothing important, she tossed the pile onto the table and headed for her bedroom, eager to strip off her smoky work clothes. She settled on a Garfield nightshirt, old Nike shorts and a pair of threadbare pink socks—her favorite—before returning to the kitchen, where she filled a tumbler with ice and began working the plastic cork. The satisfying POP was still echoing around the tiny kitchen when her phone rang.
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